Porter’s Five Forces in the Robotics Industry
Iryna Varniaga
University of Maryland University College
Fall 2013

Turnitin score: 25%

Porter’s Five Forces in the Robotics Industry “Porter’s five forces”: Introduction. “Porter’s five forces” is widely applied in today’s business world. Harvard Professor Michael E. Porter’s first HBR article “How competitive forces shape strategy” was published in 1979. It became revolutionary in the field of strategy. Porter’s subsequent work has brought big changes to the study of competitive strategy for corporations, regions, and nations. With assistance from his colleagues from Harvard Business School, Porter continues to update and extend his classic work, providing practical guidance for users of the framework (Porter 2008, Editor’s Note). According to Porter, dealing with competition is the main task of the strategist. But managers often think of competition too narrowly. Instead of considering just the current competitors, Porter suggested including four other competitive forces as well. They are customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. All these five forces result in extended rivalry that defines an industry structure and the nature of competition within an industry. Although the configuration of five forces differs by industry, the underlying drivers of profitability are the same. The strongest competitive forces define the profitability of an industry and are very important to strategy formulation (Porter, 2008). Analysis of the robotics industry. The robotics industry is growing year after year. The industrial robots application becomes more demanding and complicated because of growing modernization and automation of the manufacturing process in all branches of industry, flexibility, and demands for a change in manufacturing lines of industrial robot functions (Karabegovic,