How Stigler, Porter, Ohmae, and the Marine Corps shaped this digital-era strategy model
TL;DR
George Stigler explained why information shapes markets.
Michael Porter explained how competitive forces shape industries.
Kenichi Ohmae explained how organizations align around customer value.
But today’s economy is shaped by information abundance, digital ecosystems, and AI-driven mediation — forces none of them lived long enough to see.
To navigate the modern landscape, we need a new model that integrates:
- information economics
- competitive pressure
- customer-centric strategy
- organizational alignment
- execution under uncertainty
This article builds the conceptual foundation for that model:
The Five Strategic Levers — a next-generation strategy framework for the AI era.
1. Why the Old Strategy Models Fall Short Today
For decades, business leaders relied on frameworks built for a world of:
- information scarcity
- high switching costs
- slower market cycles
- predictable supply chains
- stable industry boundaries
But today’s competition is shaped by:
- information abundance
- real-time switching
- algorithmic allocation of visibility
- cognitive overload
- AI answering systems
- behavioral shortcuts
- digital friction
- globalized information flows
The competitive “terrain” has changed, but our strategy models haven’t.
2. The Roots of Modern Strategy: Stigler, Porter, and Ohmae
Before digital transformation became a discipline, three thinkers shaped how I view the world and approach business strategy.
Stigler → Information Economics
Economist George Stigler taught us that:
- Information has a cost
- Asymmetry distorts markets
- Reducing information cost shifts power to the consumer
In a world where AI reduces information costs to near zero, Stigler becomes more relevant than ever. He framed information as an economic activity—something people search for, weigh, and use to reduce uncertainty. But his most important insight for our moment is this:
Reducing information asymmetry reshapes entire markets.
He couldn’t have predicted the internet, Google, or AI engines.
But his theory explains precisely why digital ecosystems have overturned old competitive logic.
Porter → External Competitive Forces
Two decades after Stigler, Michael Porter introduced the Five Forces, giving leaders a structured way to understand competitive pressure. Porter’s model was so powerful because it:
- formalized how industries organize
- explained value capture via bargaining power
- created a shared language across disciplines
- helped businesses understand external forces, not just internal activities
But Porter’s world assumed:
- stable industries
- information scarcity
- slower cycles of disruption
- competition driven by physical assets and supply chains
That’s not the world we live in today.
Ohmae → Internal Alignment & Differentiation
Kenichi Ohmae showed that strategy must align:
- company strengths
- customer needs
- competitor positioning
He brought an inside-out, customer-first lens to strategy.
Together, they created the intellectual pillars of modern strategy — but none of them lived to see the digital era their theories foreshadowed.
3. The Fourth Force: The Marine Corps Operating System
Long before I learned strategy in a classroom, I realized something else in the Marine Corps: How to operate in chaos.
Ten years as a Marine imprinted a mindset that later shaped my entire approach to managing and improving digital systems:
- Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, also known as Semper Gumby (always flexible)
- Make decisions with incomplete information
- Execute based on Commander’s Intent (mission is greater than tasks)
- Recognize that everything operates as an interdependent system
- Move fast, iterate, and solve the problem in front of you
Modern digital transformation operates under the exact same conditions:
- ambiguous data
- shifting systems
- rapid change
- organizational friction
- unpredictable outcomes
- conflicting priorities
Most strategy thinkers come from business schools.
My first strategy teacher was chaos, and that changed how I saw everything.
4. The Inflection Point: Business School and Global Strategy
After the Marine Corps, I went to business school and encountered Porter and Ohmae together for the first time.
They gave structure to the chaos:
- Porter → the external competitor map
- Ohmae → the internal compass
- Marine Corps → the execution engine
This combination became the early blueprint of how I approached strategy.
But another shift was coming.
5. The Moment Everything Clicked — Discovering Stigler
While presenting a version of my business school thesis at an academic conference in St Petersburg, Russia — a paper on how the internet could allow businesses to reach overseas markets — the host professor asked: “Have you read Stigler’s Economics of Information?”
That single question changed the trajectory of my career.
Stigler explained something that Porter and Ohmae didn’t:
Markets are shaped not by products, but by information flows and search costs.
Suddenly, the internet wasn’t a “technology.” It was a collapse of global information asymmetry. That is what I was trying to say in my rudimentary paper, which all my professors hated because they viewed the Internet at the time as a fad.
This became the intellectual backbone of everything that came later. By reducing the friction in the vendor identification and purchase process, companies can increase revenue exponentially.
6. Real-World Proof — Selling to Japan From a Small Website
As a student, I worked on a graduate project building software for Mode of Entry Modeling. My job was to develop the weight logic for nearly 1,000 decision variables that a company must evaluate in its mode-of-entry decision.
Ironically, my day job was as a Disaster Preparedness Consultant and the management of a Japanese and English-language website for my company, Quake Gear. It was the proof point of my thesis. I had sold millions of dollars’ worth of earthquake supplies to Japan after the Kobe Earthquake because some Japanese news outlets and magazines featured preparedness tips from my website. I had effectively bypassed the very logic I was coding and essentially created an entirely new mode of entry for international markets.
It worked — exceptionally well. A tiny American business wasn’t supposed to crack the seemingly elusive Japanese market. But information transparency changed all of that:
- Japanese buyers found me in especially large department stores and businesses
- trusted what they saw
- and transacted across borders
- without agents, distributors, or in-country presence
This wasn’t a marketing success. It was an information economics validation.
American Fortune 100 enterprises noticed. They did not want my supplies, but hired me to replicate the same phenomenon for them.
That singular experience launched a 30-year career in global digital transformation consulting.
7. The Digital Reality: What Stigler and Porter Couldn’t See Coming
Today’s competition is governed by forces neither model anticipated:
• Information abundance, not scarcity
Consumers now face too much information, not too little.
AI summarizes it, filters it, judges it.
• Algorithmic mediation
Search engines, recommendation systems, LLMs, and feeds decide which brands get visibility.
• Multi-dimensional decision-making
Younger consumers choose based on:
- trust
- authenticity
- identity fit
- friction
- social proof
- clarity of explanation
- values alignment
—not just price, availability, or features.
• Near-zero switching cost
With a single tap, swipe, or query, buyers shift to a competitor.
• AI-generated synthesis
Brands no longer compete solely for rankings—they compete for inclusion in AI answers.
• Visibility as an economic variable
To be seen is to be chosen.
But being “understood” is now the prerequisite to being seen.
This is not an industrial economy.
This is an information economy governed by algorithmic economics.
8. Why Strategy Needs a New Model
If Stigler explained why information matters…
And Porter explained how forces shape industries…
Then AI-driven digital ecosystems reveal where competition actually happens today:
In the flow of information between consumers, algorithms, and brands.
The old models still matter—but they describe a world where physical markets dominated.
We need a model for the world where:
- Web experience is economic friction
- Search visibility is market access
- Information architecture is competitive positioning
- Structured data is a cost reduction for AI engines
- Trust signals dictate inclusion in synthesized answers
- Consumer behavior is shaped by heuristics, not funnels
This is a new competitive arena that requires a new strategic framework.
9. Introducing the Five Strategic Levers
A modern strategy model built for the AI-mediated, information-rich digital economy.
The Five Strategic Levers unify:
- Information economics (Stigler)
- External market forces (Porter)
- Internal strategic alignment (Ohmae)
- Execution under uncertainty (Marine Corps doctrine)
…into a single, coherent model for digital transformation.
1. Consumer Economics
How effort, trust, cognitive load, and risk shape modern decision-making.
2. Search Economics
How digital and AI systems allocate visibility, interpret information, and determine discoverability.
3. Behavioral Economics
Why humans make decisions based on heuristics, shortcuts, values, identity, and friction.
4. Information Economics
How structure, clarity, and semantic organization determine machine understanding and reduce friction.
5. AI Economics
How AI engines choose which brands to include, cite, trust, and recommend.
These five levers describe the actual mechanics of digital competition today — and why so many organizations fail to compete in the AI era.
Closing Thought
Porter helped us understand industries.
Ohmae helped us understand customers and internal alignment.
Stigler helped us understand information and markets.
The Marine Corps taught me how to execute in chaos.
But the digital world is a convergence of all four — and it requires a new strategic model.
The Five Strategic Levers is the model that I will outline in a new 10-Part Strategy Series.
The next article explores the first lever: Consumer Economics — the real engine of demand in the digital age.
Supporting Research:
- Stigler, G. (1961). “The Economics of Information.” Journal of Political Economy.
- Varian, H. (2014). Google’s Chief Economist: “Information asymmetry is collapsing faster than any period in history due to digital systems.”
- Porter, M. (1980). Competitive Strategy.
- McKinsey (2023): “The new economic landscape is shaped not by traditional industry boundaries, but by digital ecosystems and information flows.”
- Harvard Business Review (2020): “Digital channels have collapsed switching costs across almost every consumer category.”
- BCG (2022): “Gen Z is the most values-driven cohort ever measured.”
- McKinsey (2021): “Switching behavior has intensified—70% of Gen Z have switched brands in the past year due to trust or values misalignment.”
- McKinsey (2024): “Generative AI is now a decision-making layer in consumer journeys.”
- Stanford HAI (2023): AI systems shape “what information is surfaced, trusted, and acted upon.”
