The 7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer & Jeff Lawson
In this episode, James Currier, Jeff Lawson, and Hamilton Helmer delve into the importance of defensibility, the 7 Powers of strategy, and the role of inventiveness. They discuss network economies using Uber as a case study, examine scale economies, and explore the concept of Counter Positioning. They also discuss the challenges for incumbents adapting to new business models, the power of branding, and cornered resources. The episode ends with insights on process power and developing entrepreneurial power.
Key Points
- Building a durable business requires understanding and creating one of the seven powers: network effects, scale economies, counter positioning, switching costs, branding, cornered resource, and process power.
- The journey to developing these powers is a creative act that unfolds over time, requiring focus, discipline, and a deep responsiveness to customer needs and market dynamics.
- Operational excellence is critical in reaching a position of power, but it is often not a source of power itself, unless it results in a complex and long-standing competitive advantage like Toyota's process power.
In this special NFX Podcast episode, Jeff Lawson (Co-Founder & CEO at Twilio) interviews Hamilton Helmer to analyze the 7 Powers, getting at the core question: What is it about certain businesses that keeps the force of competition away? Helmer’s framework reveals that you can intentionally craft the conditions for persistent & durable differential returns.
7 Powers is Hamilton’s cognitive guide to building an enduringly great business and breaks fresh ground by constructing a comprehensive strategy toolset that is easy for you to learn, communicate and quickly apply. Hamilton has led over 200 strategy projects with major clients such as Adobe Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Netflix, Raychem, and Spotify.
Jeff Lawson is a Co-Founder and CEO at Twilio, a cloud communications platform that adds messaging, voice and video to web and mobile apps. He is a serial inventor with over 15 years of entrepreneurial and product experience.
Read the full NFX Essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/seven-powers/
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Transcript
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