Applying Porter’s Five Forces to Fix U.S. Politics

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Harvard Business Review

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4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Katherine Gehl, a former CEO and the founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, and Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, apply his Five Forces framework to explain why U.S. politics are dysfunctional. They argue that the Republican and Democratic parties make up an industry duopoly with high barriers to entry and low consumer power, and that the resulting lack of competition incentivizes these two dominant players to avoid compromises with majority support. Gehl and Porter provide specific innovations on how to enhance competition and better serve the public, including nonpartisan primary elections and ranked-choice voting. Gehl and Porter are coauthors of the new book “The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy” and the HBR article “Fixing U.S. Politics."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you
0:09.8	it's easy just go to HBR.org
0:13.0	podcast survey.
0:15.0	Again, that's HBR.org slash podcast survey.
0:19.0	And, thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBRIDIA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickin. It's a widespread opinion. It's a widespread opinion that the U.S. political system is dysfunctional.
0:53.0	Just look at the government response to the COVID-19 crisis, you'll hear people say,
0:58.0	or the protests against police brutality,
1:01.0	there's a tremendous disconnect between what people want and what politicians are doing to serve those wishes
1:06.9	But our guests on the show today say the political system is working exactly how it is designed to work
1:14.4	They're from the business world and have applied competitive strategy frameworks and market analyses to the
1:18.2	political sphere. They argue it is not optimized to work for ordinary citizens but instead to keep two
1:25.2	political parties in power and that's what it does very well. Think of the
1:30.6	Republican and Democrat parties more like Coke and Pepsi, they say, two organizations
1:35.5	that have sold a lot of COLA over the decades and have been immensely successful at dominating
1:40.5	the market.
1:41.5	Catherine Gail is the former CEO of Gail Foods
1:44.8	and the founder of the Institute for Political Innovation
1:48.1	and Michael Porter is a professor at Harvard Business School.
1:51.1	Together they wrote the book The Politics Industry,
1:54.0	How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy,
1:58.8	as well as the HBR article Fixing U.S. Politics,
2:02.4	what business can and must do to revitalize democracy.
	...

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