Extending Porter’s five forces framework for the digital era

The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners and academics with new forces that are necessary to take into account when applying Michael Porter’s five forces framework for industry analysis. A reality that many managers, consultants, executives, and other practitioners have observed is that Porter’s framework was developed before the era of digitalization. For example, its recognition of technology’s impact on its list of forces is limited. Rather than abandoning Porter’s framework, this paper develops a multi-forces framework (MFF) which integrates digital ecosystem forces (DEF) and Porter’s competitive forces into a single framework. The paper describes four DEFs that would enable researchers and practitioners to understand how digital ecosystem forces and competitive forces impact rivalry in an industry. These ecosystem forces work concurrently with the forces that Porter identified to shape changes in an industry’s structure and, with it, the intensity of rivalry.