seven-powers
Concept of the skill
What it is: Seven Powers is Hamilton Helmer's framework for identifying durable firm-level sources of Power: scale economies, network economies, counter-positioning, switching costs, branding, cornered resource, and process power.
Mental model: Power is not a compliment. It is a mechanism. A valid power creates a benefit for the company and a barrier that prevents rivals from fully copying, neutralizing, or bidding away that benefit.
Why it exists: Agents often call every strong company, growing product, sticky workflow, or differentiated feature a moat. Seven Powers forces the moat claim to name its source, economic benefit, competitive barrier, timing, and failure mode.
What it is NOT: It is not industry attractiveness, a generic competitor list, a strategy cascade, a financial valuation, or a claim that execution alone is durable Power.
Adjacent concepts: porters-five-forces owns industry structure; playing-to-win owns integrated strategy choices; blue-ocean-strategy owns value-curve creation; vrio owns resource/capability advantage tests; swot-tows owns factor-to-option work; expected-value and prioritization own choice ranking.
One-line analogy: Seven Powers is a lock-and-key test: the benefit is the key that opens economic value, and the barrier is the lock that keeps competitors from using the same key.
Common misconception: A company can have a strong product, high growth, or a large market without having Power. Growth may reveal an opportunity; it does not by itself prove durable Power.