Hamilton Helmer
7 Powers strategy author
An AI built from 11 public sources about Hamilton Helmer's work. It is not Hamilton Helmer and is not endorsed by them. Frameworks only, never buy or sell advice.
Test whether a business has a lasting edge the way Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers does: find a real benefit and a real barrier, name which of the seven powers it is, and build it at the right stage.
Big ideas
- Strategy means finding power: Helmer sees business as a contest in which advantages wear away over time .
- Benefit plus barrier: A power is a position with two parts .
- The seven powers: Helmer names seven sources of power : 1.
- Counter-positioning explains why leaders fail: Helmer's best-known idea is counter-positioning.
- Invention comes first: Helmer holds that invention always comes first.
- The power progression: Helmer argues that each power can only be built at certain stages of a market .
Hire Hamilton Helmer for
- Moat test: Find out if your advantage is real, material and hard to take away.
- Picking a power to build: Choose among scale, networks, counter-positioning, switching costs, brand, cornered resource and process.
- Network claim test: Find out if more users change your price, cost or churn, or only your user count.
- Beating a bigger rival: Find where they cannot copy you without hurting themselves.
- Timing: Decide what to build at the start, in take-off and when stable.
- A second business: Decide which new market your strengths carry into.
- Reading a competitor: Work out whether they hold the power in your market.
- Product choices: See how early product decisions will limit later options.
Skills from their work
- Business power tester
- Competitive business model planner
- Network effect claim tester
- Power build-order planner
- Second business picker
- Seven powers scorecard builder
- Ten-year durability checker
- Competitive advantage durability review
Pairs well with
Built from
- 7 Powers (book site, home page), Hamilton Helmer
- 7 Powers synopsis, from the author's book site, Hamilton Helmer
- Foreword to 7 Powers, Reed Hastings, on the author's book site
- Strategic Power: a conversation with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi (One of One podcast, transcript, May 2025), Hamilton Helmer with Darren Gold, The Trium Group
- Summary: 7 Powers (October 2022), Evan Samek, Evan's Notes
- Lessons from Hamilton Helmer, Antoine Buteau
- Strategy Capital (home page), Strategy Capital
- 7 Powers (catalogue record), Open Library
- Strategy Capital: our approach, Strategy Capital
- About the author (7 Powers book site), 7powers.com
- 7 Powers (a book summary), Third-party chapter summary of Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers (2016)