7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy

Hamilton Helmer’s rigorous framework for understanding sustainable competitive advantage. This book identifies seven distinct sources of power that create and maintain business value.

The Seven Powers

• Scale Economies: Unit costs decline with increased volume
• Network Effects: Value increases with more users
• Counter-Positioning: New model incumbents can’t copy
• Switching Costs: Pain of changing products
• Branding: Objective value beyond functionality
• Cornered Resource: Preferential access to resources
• Process Power: Embedded company processes

Strategic Thinking for PMs

Understanding these powers helps product managers make better strategic decisions about where to compete and how to build defensible products.