"The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change"
About this Quote
Porter’s line lands like a rebuke to the era’s favorite fairy tale: that new tools rewrite the rules. He’s not denying technological upheaval; he’s demoting it. Strategy, in his view, isn’t a carnival of hacks and dashboards, it’s an argument about choices under constraint - what you will do, what you will refuse to do, and how you’ll sustain an advantage when everyone can buy the same software.
The intent is defensive and disciplinary. It speaks to executives and founders intoxicated by speed, mistaking motion for direction. “Pace of change” is a pointed phrase: it names the cult of urgency that turns companies into anxious reactors, permanently beta, permanently copying the last disruptor. Porter’s subtext is that technology mostly accelerates imitation. It compresses the time between an idea and a competitor’s clone, which makes differentiation harder, not easier. If your “strategy” collapses the moment a new platform drops, you never had one.
Context matters: Porter’s work emerged from an era when management theory was professionalizing and global competition was intensifying. His frameworks - value chain, five forces - were designed to force clarity in messy markets. This quote is the modern update: AI, cloud, and social platforms change cost curves and distribution, but they don’t abolish bargaining power, switching costs, or trade-offs. The line works because it’s both comforting and accusatory: comforting because it suggests stable ground; accusatory because it implies most “innovation” talk is an excuse to avoid the harder task of committing to a coherent position.
The intent is defensive and disciplinary. It speaks to executives and founders intoxicated by speed, mistaking motion for direction. “Pace of change” is a pointed phrase: it names the cult of urgency that turns companies into anxious reactors, permanently beta, permanently copying the last disruptor. Porter’s subtext is that technology mostly accelerates imitation. It compresses the time between an idea and a competitor’s clone, which makes differentiation harder, not easier. If your “strategy” collapses the moment a new platform drops, you never had one.
Context matters: Porter’s work emerged from an era when management theory was professionalizing and global competition was intensifying. His frameworks - value chain, five forces - were designed to force clarity in messy markets. This quote is the modern update: AI, cloud, and social platforms change cost curves and distribution, but they don’t abolish bargaining power, switching costs, or trade-offs. The line works because it’s both comforting and accusatory: comforting because it suggests stable ground; accusatory because it implies most “innovation” talk is an excuse to avoid the harder task of committing to a coherent position.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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