In 2017, Harvard professor Michael Porter gave a 72-minute masterclass on why most companies fail at strategy. His frameworks: - "There is no best company" - The IKEA test he hated every minute of - Why happy customers mean you're in trouble 12 lessons on strategy:

1. "There is no best company" Porter: "The biggest mistake in strategy is to think there's only one way to compete. There is no best auto. There is no best insurance company. It all depends on who you're trying to serve." If you're trying to be #1 at everything, you're trying to do something impossible.

2. The most dangerous word in business is "best" "When you ask what's the best car company, you can't answer that. Being the best all depends on who you're trying to serve." Young families need something different than performance buyers. Strategy starts when you stop chasing "best" and start choosing who.

3. Strategy is not a goal "Wanting to grow faster is not a strategy. Being number one or number two is not a strategy. Those are goals. Those are aspirations." Strategy is the unique position that gets you to whatever goal you set. Most companies confuse the two and end up with neither.

4. "If every customer is happy, you're in trouble" "One of the things a great strategy does is it doesn't please every customer. If you're trying to please every customer, you don't have a strategy." This is counterintuitive. But Porter says the companies that try to serve everyone end up serving no one well.

5. The IKEA test he personally failed Porter took his daughter to IKEA. He hated the experience - no service, hauling boxes, assembling furniture himself. "It didn't work for me. I pretty much hated every minute I was in that store." But his daughter loved it. That's the point. IKEA chose her, not him. Great strategy makes some customers unhappy on purpose.

6. "The essence of strategy is what you choose NOT to do" "It's the service you don't offer. The functions you don't provide. The benefit you don't offer." Most leaders define strategy by what they're adding. Porter says real clarity comes from what you're willing to give up.

7. The industrial gas trick nobody saw coming Everyone thought selling commodity gases like hydrogen was a terrible business. "Your first look says not so good. I don't want to play here." But transportation costs made customer density king. Companies with 17 clients in Mumbai crushed competitors serving one. The investors who saw this made fortunes in an industry Wall Street ignored.

8. Don't confuse operational effectiveness with strategy "Operational effectiveness is doing the same things as your competitor better and better. That's not strategy." If you buy the newest machines first, you'll be ahead - until they buy them too. Best practices keep you alive. Strategy is what makes you win.

9. The stock price trap "We can't try to please the stock market. That's going to confuse us. It's going to pull us away from where we want to go." Porter says economic performance drives stock price, not the other way around. CEOs who chase analyst expectations lose their strategy.

10. Strategy takes years. Stop changing it. "It takes two or three years to implement a strategy because you've got to get all those pieces aligned." Companies that pivot quarterly never build the interconnected value chain that makes strategy work. Continuity is a competitive advantage most leaders underestimate.

11. Why the CEO can never delegate strategy "Nobody else has the right perspective for strategy except the ultimate leader." Marketing sees marketing. Operations sees operations. Only the person running the business sees how all the pieces fit together. Strategy by committee produces compromise. Compromise is the opposite of strategy.

12. The worst thing a CEO can do: reject the plan Porter trains ~350 of the world's top new CEOs at Harvard. His #1 warning: "If you reject your team's strategic plan, it's a reflection that you created a lousy process." The best leaders don't approve strategy at the end. They shape the process from the start so the team arrives at the right answer themselves.

Every one of these lessons applies beyond corporate strategy. In wildfire insurance, we see the same mistakes: companies chasing "best" instead of choosing who to serve, copying competitors instead of building unique positions, and changing direction every fire season.

The companies winning in wildfire risk aren't trying to be everything to everyone. They're choosing a lane - proactive mitigation - and building a value chain around it. That's what we do at @RockRoseRisk. Follow me @aerockrose for more frameworks on risk, strategy, and building what others won't.

Homeowners: We'll help you mitigate wildfire risk AND lower your premiums. RockRose clients save an average of 21% on their FAIR Plan premiums through verified wildfire mitigation. Want to know how much you could save? Get your free estimate:

Put the main ideas into notes so it’s easier to revisit. 👉

True strategy, per Michael Porter, is about deliberate choices and trade-offs — not trying to be best at everything. The Urban Nexus Hub applies this discipline: we convert underutilized offices into resilient micro-districts by combining FIFO grocery innovation, edge data center capacity, and waste-heat microgrid recovery. We accept the complexity others avoid so the pieces reinforce each other, creating diversified cash flow and stronger economics than single-use conversions.

Our @_AfricanUnion can really benefit from this rethink of strategy in it’s ongoing Reform process

@grok do you have the link to the YouTube version

@grok 動画の要約をして下さい

cool thread

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Look what happened to his consulting firm….

@jaymmcdonald He’s never run a successful business

@grok analyze the video and summarise around 12 bullet points with examples

@readwise save thread

Thanks for posting this talk on corporate strategy. It applies from Fortune 500 down to sole proprietor.

@threadreaderapp unroll

Something of a fake. His younger brother died unexpectedly and without life insurance. His brother’s widow told friends her brother in law provided no financial help to her or her children, including at least one child with special needs.

@grok , summary of the video please.