Topic: Strategy Frameworks
Strategy for Product Leaders: Eight Frameworks for the AI Era
What Each Framework Actually Forces, How They Combine, and Why All Eight Point at the Same Operational Question
The eight strategy frameworks every product leader should know in 2026—Playing to Win, 7 Powers, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Wardley Maps, Blue Ocean, Porter's Five Forces, Porter's Generic Strategies, and SWOT. Each is a thinking scaffold that forces a specific conversation. Together they are the toolkit for strategy that survives AI-era disruption and actually connects to the roadmap.
7 Powers: Hamilton Helmer's Durable Moats and the AI Reframe
Which Powers Strengthen, Which Erode, and How to Tag Your Roadmap Against Them
Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers is the rigorous definition of what actually makes a moat durable. In 2026, AI rewrites which Powers strengthen and which erode — and product leaders need a sharper view of which Power each squad is building.
Blue Ocean Strategy: Value Innovation Reframed for the AI Era
Red Oceans Get Redder Faster—and the Strategy Canvas Quietly Encourages Exactly the Wrong Move
Blue Ocean Strategy's value innovation canvas taught a generation of strategists to find uncontested market space through feature differentiation. In 2026, features are cloned in weeks and red oceans get redder faster. The surviving blue oceans are about channel, segment, and workflow — not features.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: Rumelt's Kernel as a Fluff Detector
Diagnosis, Guiding Policy, Coherent Action—and How to Tell Product Strategy From Word Salad
Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy Bad Strategy offers a three-part kernel—diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action—and a practical test for separating strategy from fluff. Apply it to your product roadmap before writing the business case.
Playing to Win: The Strategy Cascade as a Forcing Function
Why Roger Martin's Five-Question Framework Is a Thinking Scaffold, Not a Fill-in Template
Roger Martin's Playing to Win is a thinking scaffold, not a template. Use the five-question strategy cascade to force honest strategic answers—and to structure the business case no product should go on the roadmap without.
Porter's Five Forces: What the AI Era Has Rewritten
Threat of New Entrants Is Now Effectively Infinite—and Three Forces Need Updating
Porter's Five Forces remains the right scaffold for diagnosing industry structure, but three of the five forces have structurally changed in the AI era. Threat of new entrants is effectively infinite, substitutes appear faster, and rivalry intensifies on one side. Two forces still work fine.
Porter's Generic Strategies: Why Focus Is the Only Survivor in the AI Era
Cost Leadership Is Dead; Feature-Based Differentiation Is Dead; Segment-Plus-Channel-Plus-Brand Focus Is the Surviving Winning Position
Porter gave us three generic strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, focus. In 2026, AI has killed cost leadership as a durable moat in software, feature-based differentiation is cloned in weeks, and focus (segment specialisation combined with channel and brand) is the only surviving strategy. This changes everything about capacity allocation.
SWOT Analysis: Why a SWOT Is Not a Strategy (and How to Use It Anyway)
The 1997 Paper That Called for Its Recall, the 40-Factor Trap, and How to Turn a SWOT Into an Input for Real Strategic Choice
SWOT analysis has been the default situational-assessment tool for forty years, and in 1997 academics called for its recall. Twenty-nine years on, most organisations still produce the 40-factor, un-prioritised, never-actioned SWOTs the critics warned about. A SWOT isn't a strategy. Here's how to use it anyway.
Wardley Maps: Situational Awareness for Product Leaders in the AI Era
Mapping Your Value Chain, Tagging Components by Evolution, and Connecting Pioneers-Settlers-Town Planners to Squad Allocation
Wardley Maps are the map strategy has been missing. Plot your value chain against the evolution axis—genesis, custom, product, commodity—and you see which components your squads should pioneer, settle, or industrialise. In 2026, AI accelerates every component's march toward commodity, and the map has to be redrawn more often.