Ecosystems, business models, and rivals who move back
Session 3 used the five forces to ask how much of the value an industry creates its members get to keep. The framework holds the rest of the world still: suppliers supply, buyers buy, and rivals are a level of intensity. Tesla does not sit still in those boxes. Its battery supplier was also an investor, it built its own charging network in an industry where building and running stations was unprofitable, and the incumbents it attacked sold through dealers who earned much of their profit servicing the kind of car Tesla meant to replace.
This session adds two lenses. Ecosystems and business models show where value is created around the product and who captures it. Game theory and competitor analysis treat rivals as players who anticipate and respond. Courtney, Kirkland and Viguerie (1997) then ask the question that decides how far to trust either lens: how uncertain is the future you are planning for?
What this session answers
Facts come from the two Tesla cases and the readings, with page references. The payoffs in the game on this page are illustrative and are labelled as such; they show the logic, not Tesla’s accounts.
Carried forward · Sessions 2 and 3
Session 3 built the five forces properly and rated the US auto industry with them. It ended on two loose threads, and a third comes from the textbook’s critique of the framework. Nothing below re-teaches the forces; it starts where they stop.
Session 3 · five (six) forces
Rothaermel counts complements as a sixth force; Porter says they act through the five. Both agree a complement can grow demand. Neither tells you how the extra value is split between Tesla and the firms whose products make a Tesla worth more. That split is where this session begins.
Session 3 · the hand-off
Musk said Tesla was “open” to other carmakers using its Supercharger network if they shared the cost of usage (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 14). On a five-forces diagram a rival can only appear as rivalry. Here it could also pay for, and depend on, a complement Tesla owns.
Grant (2018) · the critique
The central criticism of the five forces, Grant writes, is that they ignore competitive interaction: rivalry becomes a variable linking structure to profit, not decisions by firms that anticipate each other (p. 91). And industry explains less than 20% of the variation in firms’ return on assets (p. 84). Industry analysis still matters; it is not the whole picture.
The trap this session sets
Tesla’s history is easy to read as a string of brilliant moves, because we know how it turned out. Game theory and Courtney’s levels of uncertainty both force the harder question: what did each move look like before anyone knew how the game would end, and what did the other players believe at the time?
Session 2 · still in play
The 2006 master plan published Tesla’s sequence of moves in advance: sports car, then an affordable car, then a cheaper one, plus zero-emission power (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 5). Session 2 read it as purpose. Today, read it as a signal to rivals, suppliers and investors.
Beyond the five forces · Grant (2018), ch. 4
Grant starts from a simple asymmetry. A substitute lowers the value of a product; a complement raises it. A printer is useless without ink cartridges, a car without fuel. Once you accept that, the strategic question is no longer whether complements matter but how the value they create is shared between the firms that supply the pieces (Grant, 2018, p. 86).
01 · Complements
In 1990s video games, independent developers supplied most of the software and most of the consumer value, yet Nintendo took most of the system’s profit because it controlled the operating system and the making of cartridges. In personal computers the opposite happened: IBM’s open architecture let Windows become the proprietary standard, and the PC drifted towards a commodity (p. 86).
Grant’s rule: keep your own product monopolised, differentiated and in short supply, and encourage competition, commoditisation and excess capacity among your complements (p. 87). Apple’s ownership of iOS lets it choose which apps reach the iPhone and take 30% of their revenue; Nestlé lost control of Nespresso capsules once its patents stopped protecting them.
02 · Ecosystems
A business ecosystem is the community of organisations, institutions and individuals that affect the enterprise, bound by codependence and always evolving. Value moves between its parts with technology, regulation and customer preferences, and firms can push it. The prize is a bottleneck: an activity that creates significant customer value and that the firm can dominate (Grant, 2018, p. 88, drawing on Jacobides).
03 · Platforms
In digital systems, competition is often between platforms, the interfaces that link the parts. Complementors favour the platform with the most users and users favour the one with the most complements. That loop is the main source of winner-take-all markets, where the leader can take almost the whole profit pool (Grant, 2018, pp. 85–87).
Rothaermel defines a platform as a business that enables value-creating interactions between external producers and consumers, and names four roles in its ecosystem: owner, providers, producers and consumers (2023, pp. 282–283). Session 8 takes platforms further.
The value-capture test · Grant (2018), pp. 90–91
How much would the network lose if you left it?
The value capture model sets bounds on what a firm can take from its network of transacting parties. The ceiling is the value the network would lose if the firm walked away; the floor is what the firm could add to an alternative network. Investments with competitive intent raise the value the firm adds; actions with persuasive intent change how much the others are willing to concede. Ask it of Tesla and of a battery maker: which one does the other need more?
Activity · ecosystem map
DoneEight pieces of the ecosystem around a Tesla, as the cases describe them up to about 2019. Apply Grant’s two tests to each: does it create significant value for the customer, and could one player dominate it because it is scarce or hard to substitute? A piece that passes both is a bottleneck: worth owning, or worth making sure a rival does not own. The map changes as you decide. Then compare your read with the case evidence and with what Tesla actually did.
Business models · Grant (2018); Rothaermel (2024)
A model is a simplified description of something real, so a business model is a simplified description of a business: its core logic for creating value. Grant quotes David Teece’s definition, “the manner by which the business enterprise delivers value to customers, entices customers to pay for value, and converts those payments to profit” (Grant, 2018, p. 88). Grant leaves open whether a business model is anything more than a strategy under another name. He uses it for one job: designing how a firm exploits the opportunities in its ecosystem (pp. 88–89).
Rothaermel puts it more bluntly: the business model is where strategy turns into action, and it explains how the firm intends to make money. He asks four questions of any model: why it creates value (revenue and cost models), what activities deliver the offer, who performs them, and how the activities are linked (2023, pp. 476–477).
The canvas · Grant (2018), p. 89
The Business Model Canvas treats the firm as four blocks. A business model is one integrated set of choices across them; mapping it lets you try alternative configurations.
Infrastructure
activities, resources, partners
Customers
segments, channels, relationships
Offer
the value proposition
Financial viability
revenues, costs, profit
Paraphrased from Rothaermel (2024, pp. 478–480). Real firms combine them.
Razor–razor blades
Sell the base product cheaply, even at a loss, and earn on the complement it needs (Gillette, HP ink).
Subscription
Pay for access for a period, whether or not you use it (Office 365, Netflix).
Pay-as-you-go
Pay only for what you consume (utilities, cloud computing).
Freemium
Basic version free or cheap; charge for premium features or add-ons.
Ultra-low cost
A bare basic service at a low price, with extras sold à la carte (Ryanair).
Wholesale
Sell to retailers at a fixed price; they set the final price and keep the margin.
Agency
An agent sells on the producer’s behalf for a set percentage commission (app stores).
Bundling
Sell together, at a discount, products whose demand is negatively correlated (Office suite).
Six business-model choices. Read across each row: what the industry did, what Tesla did, and what that did to the ecosystem around the car.
Swipe the table sideways to see all four columns.
| Choice | The industry recipe | Tesla | What it did to the ecosystem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Franchised dealers; decades of dealer lobbying produced laws limiting how and where makers could sell (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, Exhibit 2). | Company-owned showrooms in malls, staff paid no commission, orders in store or online (p. 8). In 2019 it closed all but a few of its 100-plus stores; most Model 3 orders were online (p. 12). | Removed the intermediary that, a 2016 study found, steered buyers away from EVs (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 6). |
| After-sales | Dealers made 45–60% of their profits from service and parts (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 5). | Many fixes sent over the internet; 76 US service centres, about half beside stores (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 8; Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 14). | Shrank a profit pool. In Tesla’s own accounts, services and other had a negative share of gross profit every year from 2017 to 2019 (Exhibit 11a). |
| The car after sale | Fixed at purchase. Connectivity sold as packages: GM OnStar at $24.99 a month after a six-month trial (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 9). | Software updates improve acceleration and braking after sale (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 14). Full self-driving and autopilot capability priced at $8,000 from 2016 (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 9). | Moved value from hardware to software, the layer PwC warned carmakers could lose to become “dumb pipes on wheels” (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 9). |
| Energy | Fuel is someone else’s business. | Free Supercharging at the Model S launch (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 8); later $0.24 per kWh (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 14). SolarCity bought in 2016; Musk pitched “an electric car, a Powerwall and a solar roof” as the integrated future (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 10). | Turned a missing complement into part of the product. Energy generation and storage was 5–10% of revenue in 2017–2021 (Exhibit 11c). |
| Regulation | Emissions rules are a compliance cost. | Regulatory credits were 2.4%, 5.0% and 2.7% of revenue in 2019–2021, but 14.6%, 23.8% and 10.8% of gross profit (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, Exhibits 11a, 11c). | An institution in the ecosystem became a margin source: almost pure profit, but one Tesla does not control. |
| The car as a platform | — | Master Plan, Part Deux: owners could add their self-driving car to a shared fleet. One analyst put an owner’s earnings at up to $6,900 a year after paying Tesla a 10% cut (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 14). | Would make Tesla the owner of a two-sided platform, matching car owners with riders. Planned, not built, in the cases. |
Serafeim & Migdal (2024) is abbreviated to page or exhibit numbers after its first mention in a row.
Read the table as a system
Each choice changes the ecosystem as well as the income statement. Direct sales took the dealer out of the ecosystem; over-the-air fixes shrank the service profit pool the dealer lived on; Superchargers made a missing complement part of the product. That is why the choices hang together, and why Session 1’s point about fit applies: copying one piece is easy, copying the set is not.
But single pieces do get copied
Customers could collect their Tesla from a store or have it delivered home, “an approach other manufacturers and dealers quickly mimicked” (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 8). Which of the six rows would an incumbent find easiest to copy, and which would it have to fight its own dealers to copy? Hold the answer for the competitor analysis below.
Activity · business-model sorter
DoneSix ways of making money from the car and what surrounds it, all from the cases. Match each to the closest of Rothaermel’s models, then check. Two of them sit between models; the feedback says which second answer is defensible and why.
0 of 6 checked
Competitive interaction · Grant (2018), pp. 91–95
A strategic situation is one of interdependence: what each player should do depends on what it expects the others to do. Game theory gives that situation a structure by asking four questions: who the players are, what options each has, what each player earns from every combination of options, and in what sequence the decisions are made (Grant, 2018, p. 91).
Sequence · simultaneous games
When players commit before they can observe each other, as with capacity booked a year ahead, you reason by best responses: for each move the rival might make, what is my best reply? A pair of moves from which neither player can gain by changing alone is a Nash equilibrium (Grant, 2018, p. 93). It need not be good for either player.
Sequence · sequential games
When the second mover sees the first move, the first mover works backwards: for each move I could make, how will the rival reply, and which of those outcomes do I prefer? Moving first is worth something only if the move is visible and hard to undo. A price cut that can be reversed next quarter is not a first move; it is an announcement.
The prisoners’ dilemma · p. 93
Grant’s example: Coca-Cola and Pepsi each choose a big or small advertising budget. Both would earn more with small budgets, but each fears the other will exploit its restraint, so both spend big. The equilibrium is worse for both, and any agreement to restrain is unstable because each gains by cheating. Two escapes: turn a one-off game into a repeated one, or change the payoffs through deterrence.
Look for the same structure in the cases. Charging stations were unprofitable to build, and different stakeholders argued over who should pay; BMW and Nissan chose to back one shared fast-charging network, EVgo, open to every EV driver (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 7). Which escape from the dilemma is that?
Five ways to change the outcome · pp. 91–94
Tesla · commitment and signal
Panasonic agreed to fund 30–40% of the $5 billion Gigafactory 1 (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 9): a visible, sunk, shared investment that is hard to walk back. The case also reports one reading of Musk’s 2018 pay plan as a signal rather than pay: “They were about signaling a credible commitment to Tesla’s purpose: to become a clean energy giant” (p. 10). Does a pay plan remove any options? A factory does.
How far to trust it · pp. 94–95
Game theory is rigorous, but it gives clear predictions only in stylised situations; with realistic detail it often yields no equilibrium or several. Grant judges it better at explaining the past than predicting the future. Its use is to structure the situation and show how to change the game. Deterrence and preemption get a full session in the sustaining-advantage extension.
Activity · payoff matrix
DoneTwo players, two options each. Pick any cell to see whether either player would want to move away from it. Then solve the game, and change one thing at a time: the order of moves, Tesla’s cost position, and the emissions rules. The payoffs are an illustrative profit index (higher is better), chosen to make the logic visible; they are not figures from the cases.
Order of moves
Tesla’s cost position
After: Tesla expected battery cells at $100 per kWh by the end of 2018, against the $145 GM paid LG Chem for the Bolt (Sull & Reavis, 2019, p. 13). A lower cost makes a price cut pay for Tesla.
Emissions rules
Penalised: governments tighten fleet emissions limits and announce bans on new combustion cars (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, Exhibits 4 and 9), so a carmaker without EVs loses money whatever Tesla does.
Each cell: incumbent’s payoff, then Tesla’s. A ring marks the equilibrium once solved.
Competitor analysis · Grant (2018), pp. 95–98
In a concentrated industry the behaviour of a few close rivals dominates the environment. Game theory supplies the formal apparatus, but Grant argues that for most decisions a less formal, evidence-based prediction of what rivals will do is enough (2018, p. 95). Competitive intelligence serves three purposes: forecast rivals’ strategies, predict their reactions to your moves, and work out how to influence their behaviour. The boundary with industrial espionage is not always clear (pp. 95–96).
The problem is usually too much information, not too little. Porter’s four-part framework says what to look for. Each part below feeds the same two predictions: what will the competitor do next, and how will it respond to us?
01
Financial or market goals? A rival chasing share fights harder than one chasing profit, and one free of profit discipline, such as a state-owned firm, is hardest of all. The further performance falls short of its goals, the likelier a change of strategy, perhaps of management (p. 97).
02
How is it competing now? Look at what the company says and at what it does, and reconcile the two (p. 96). A forecast of change starts from an accurate picture of the present.
03
What its managers believe about the industry and about themselves. These beliefs are stable and converge across an industry into a shared “recipe” that can blind a whole industry. British and US motorcycle makers dismissed light Japanese bikes in the 1960s; by 1980 BSA and Triumph had stopped production and Harley-Davidson was struggling to survive (p. 97).
04
Strengths and weaknesses decide how serious a challenge or a reply can be. Do not start a price war with a rival sitting on a cash pile; aim at weaknesses it will find hard to answer (p. 98). Session 5 builds the tools for this part.
Activity · competitor profile
DoneEight pieces of evidence from the cases. File each under one of Porter’s four components and check. Some fit two; the feedback says which. Then use the whole profile to predict GM’s response to the Model 3.
0 of 8 checked
Your prediction
Given the profile, what was GM’s most likely response to Tesla’s mass-market push?
Strategy under uncertainty · Courtney, Kirkland & Viguerie (1997)
Courtney, Kirkland and Viguerie see one error behind most strategy made under uncertainty: treating it as binary. Either the future is certain enough for a point forecast, which pushes managers to bury uncertainty inside their cash flows, or it is unknowable, which tempts them to drop analysis and go on instinct. Both are dangerous (pp. 2–3). Even in uncertain markets, some trends are clear and many unknowns are knowable with the right analysis. What is left after the best possible analysis is residual uncertainty, and it comes in four levels (p. 4).
The level matters because it decides which tools work. The standard kit of market research, competitor cost and capacity analysis, the value chain, the five forces and discounted cash flow suits level 1 (p. 10). It misleads above it.
“Shaping strategies can fail, so the best companies supplement their shaping bets with options that allow them to change course quickly if necessary.”
The article summarises this argument in its exhibits on how to use the four levels, the three postures and the portfolio of actions. This page restates their ideas in words and cards; read the exhibits themselves in the course pack.
LEVEL 1
One forecast is precise enough to point to a single direction; the residual uncertainty does not change the decision. An airline answering a low-cost entrant at its hub can know segment sizes, the entrant’s costs and capacity (pp. 4–5).
Tools: the standard kit and a DCF.
LEVEL 2
A few discrete outcomes; analysis can suggest probabilities but not pick the winner, and the best strategy depends on which occurs. Pending legislation is one source; another is a rival’s capacity decision in an oligopoly (pp. 5–6).
Tools: discrete scenarios, a valuation per scenario, decision analysis, trigger variables to watch (pp. 10–11).
LEVEL 3
The outcome can fall anywhere on a continuum bounded by a few key variables, with no natural scenarios: market penetration somewhere between 10% and 30%, say, or the cost of an unproven technology (pp. 7–8).
Tools: a few distinct scenarios (no more than four or five) spanning the probable range; test robustness (pp. 11–12).
LEVEL 4
Several uncertainties interact so that not even the range can be identified. Rare, and transitional: Russia in 1992, consumer multimedia in the 1990s. Such situations drift towards level 3 or 2 (pp. 8–9).
Tools: list what is known and knowable, analogies, indicators, and what you would have to believe (pp. 12–13).
Three postures · pp. 13–15
Three kinds of move · pp. 15–16
A shaper raises uncertainty
FedEx entered a stable, level 1 delivery industry and created level 3 uncertainty for itself and level 2 for UPS: would overnight delivery work, and would UPS have to match it? Its big bets took it to the brink of bankruptcy in its first two years, then reshaped the industry (pp. 17–19).
Credibility can replace cash
At levels 3 and 4 a shaper needs the credibility to coordinate other players around its preferred outcome more than deep pockets. Netscape shaped browser standards on its leaders’ credibility (p. 24).
The right to play, or to lose?
At level 4 it is hard to tell whether small investments reserve the right to play or only the right to lose. Prefer cheap options, and re-evaluate them whenever an important uncertainty clears, at least every six months (p. 25).
Activity · uncertainty classifier
DoneSix decisions from the two cases, each seen from the date it was made. Ask what would remain unknown after the best possible analysis, and whether the possible outcomes are one, a few, a range, or not even a range. The boundary between levels 3 and 4 is a judgement; the feedback says when two answers are defensible.
0 of 6 checked
Case application · Serafeim & Migdal (2024); Sull & Reavis (2019)
Courtney’s FedEx story has a Tesla shape. In 2003 the industry looked stable: carmakers spent three to five years and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on each platform, sold through dealer networks, and ran on an infrastructure of petrol stations (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, pp. 3–4). Musk’s reading in 2003 was that the industry ran on two false premises: that a compelling electric car could not be built, and that no one would buy one (p. 4).
A shaper in a level 1 industry raises uncertainty, for itself and for the incumbents. Classify each move below by the posture it served and the kind of move it was, as it looked when it was made. One incumbent move is included for contrast.
The financial backdrop · Serafeim & Migdal (2024)
Activity · posture and move
DoneEight moves, in date order. Pick one answer in each row, then check. The score counts each row separately.
0 of 8 checked
The pattern
Tesla’s portfolio is a shaper’s. The early moves were options and no-regrets moves that kept it alive and taught it the market; the big bets went into the ecosystem pieces that passed the bottleneck test: charging and battery supply. Note when the biggest bets came. Tesla bought SolarCity in November 2016, the year it ended with $1.4 billion of free cash while burning about $500 million a quarter (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 10). FedEx’s big bets took it to the brink in its first two years (Courtney et al., 1997, pp. 18–19).
The incumbents’ portfolio
By 2018 the incumbents were buying positions as well as cars: GM a 9% stake in Lyft, Toyota talks with Panasonic on a battery joint venture, BMW a $1.1 billion contract with CATL for a battery factory in Europe (Sull & Reavis, 2019, pp. 7, 10). Which of these reserve the right to play, and which only the right to lose? What trigger variable would tell you, and how often would you look?
Video · miscellaneous videos on Steve Jobs
The course outline pairs this session with videos on Steve Jobs. The three below are the Jobs videos listed in the course textbook’s instructor resources, Rothaermel’s supplementary lecture slides. Each loads YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player only when you press play. The questions are prompts for watching with today’s tools, not summaries of what is said.
Rivals and complementors
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: the 2007 interview
Two founders on one stage. Note each point where one firm’s products make the other’s more valuable, and each point where they compete. Which of Grant’s five behaviours do you hear: cooperation, deterrence, commitment, changing the game, signalling?
Listed in Rothaermel’s chapter 4 slides. Third-party upload. Open on YouTube
Deciding without knowing
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
Jobs tells his career as a series of decisions taken before he knew how they would turn out. For each one, decide what level of uncertainty he faced, and whether he was making a big bet, buying an option or waiting.
Stanford’s own channel; listed in Rothaermel’s chapter 7 slides. Open on YouTube
Competitor analysis, from the other side
Steve Jobs in 1980: rare presentation footage
Sit in an incumbent’s chair. From what Jobs presents, write Apple’s goals, current strategy, assumptions and capabilities in one line each. What would you have predicted Apple would do next, and which of your own assumptions might have blinded you?
Listed in Rothaermel’s chapter 4 slides. Third-party upload. Open on YouTube
Third-party uploads can be taken down. If one will not play here, try its YouTube link, and mention it in class.
Go deeper
Four earlier decks cover parts of this ground. All were built for other course numberings, so the session numbers in their own titles differ from this page’s.
For class
Come with a written answer to the first two. The others are for the room.
01
Tesla built its Supercharger network itself and kept it for Tesla drivers; BMW and Nissan backed EVgo’s fast chargers, open to every EV driver (Sull & Reavis, 2019, pp. 7, 14). Use the bottleneck test and the value-capture test: which choice lets its owner capture more value, and which grows the EV market faster? On what terms should Tesla open its network, and to whom?
02
Build the competitor profile for an incumbent other than GM, using only the cases. Predict its response to the Model 3, and name the one piece of evidence that would most change your prediction.
03
Regulatory credits were 2.4% of Tesla’s revenue in 2019 but 14.6% of its gross profit. Where in the ecosystem does that margin come from, and what happens to it as the incumbents’ own EV sales grow?
04
Grant says game theory explains the past better than it predicts the future. Explain the 2014 patent offer with game theory. Then say what, if anything, game theory could have told Tesla about it in advance.
05
One reading in the case calls Musk’s 2018 pay plan a signal of credible commitment. In Grant’s sense a commitment removes options. Which options did the pay plan remove, and which did the Gigafactory remove?
06
In 2024 Musk said he wanted about 25% voting control before growing Tesla into a leader in AI and robotics (Serafeim & Migdal, 2024, p. 15). What level of uncertainty does that business face, and what posture and portfolio of moves would Courtney recommend for it?
Apply · challenge · revise
Fictional classroom scenario: an EV charging venture is negotiating with vehicle makers and site owners. Choose one proposal. The feedback identifies a primary PARTS lever and a counter-move to investigate; multiple effects can coexist.
Bring the evidence into the room
Use the 2024 Tesla case to identify a concrete ecosystem move. Classify its primary PARTS lever, identify one complementor who could also compete, and use the case to support a rival’s likely incentives.
Apply the same method to one Steve Jobs video below. Separate a memorable line from evidence of a strategic commitment. What would make the promise credible to a supplier or rival?
Retrieve · explain · retry
Retrieve the reading lenses before you use them in the case. These are concept checks, not a model case answer.
Knowledge check
Answer before you look. Each answer explains itself, and the explanation matters more than the score.
Preparation
Readings and cases are available through the course pack.
Required · V0.2 game-theory reading
Brandenburger, A. M., & Nalebuff, B. J. (1995). The Right Game: Use Game Theory to Shape Strategy. Harvard Business Review. Publisher record ↗
Bring a PARTS proposal and one credible response from another player. Connect your proposal to an uncertainty signpost.
Required · the article
Courtney, H., Kirkland, J., & Viguerie, P. (1997). Strategy under uncertainty. Harvard Business Review, 75(6).
Read it all. Page numbers on this page refer to the 27-page hbr.org print in the course pack, not to the magazine’s pagination.
Required · the case
Serafeim, G., & Migdal, A. (2024). Elon Musk at Tesla (HBS No. 9-123-044, rev. June 27, 2024). Harvard Business School Publishing.
Carried over from Sessions 2 and 3. Reread pp. 5–13 for Tesla’s moves and Exhibits 11a–11c and 12a for the numbers.
Supplementary · historical companion case
Sull, D., & Reavis, C. (2019). Tesla’s entry into the U.S. auto industry (No. 18-186). MIT Sloan School of Management.
Reread pp. 6–14: competitors’ EV plans, charging, connectivity, mobility services, the Gigafactory and Tesla’s sales and service model. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.
Textbook · chapter 4
Grant, R. M. (2018). Contemporary strategy analysis (10th ed.). Wiley. Chapter 4, Further topics in industry and competitive analysis, pp. 83–106.
This session’s title and topics follow the chapter’s sections: beyond the five forces, then game theory and competitor analysis. Page numbers on this page are from the 10th edition; the 11th edition’s Indian adaptation keeps the same chapter.
Further · platforms and business models
Rothaermel, F. T. (2024). Strategic management (6th ed.). McGraw Hill. Section 7.5, Platform strategy, pp. 281–286; section 12.3, Business models, pp. 476–480.
The source of the platform roles and the eight revenue logics on this page.
Video
Miscellaneous videos on Steve Jobs: the three in the Watch section above.
Watch at least one before class, with its question in mind.
Carried forward
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, 86(1), 78–93.
Porter, M. E. (1996). What is strategy? Harvard Business Review, 74(6), 61–78.