Learn strategy from what actually worked

See how great companies won. Make your next strategy call with confidence.

If you’re deciding where to compete, what to build or how to sell, other companies have made the same call. Some won and some lost. See what each one chose and how it turned out, so you can learn from both.

Head-to-head

Why Figma beat InVision

InVision owned the review layer on top of other tools. Figma owned the file itself, then let everyone into it free.

Browser editor: the file lives at a URLProduct Strategy
InVision: A review layer on files made in Sketch and Photoshop
Everyone works in one live fileProduct Strategy
InVision: Comments only; a four-year rebuild to own the file never shipped
Viral adoption with free collaboratorsGo-to-Market
InVision: Charged $8 a month per commenter (2018)
Network effects: colleagues and the talent poolDefensibility
InVision: Overtaken for prototyping by 2019
Switching costsMoat · Defensibility
InVision: Design services shut down in 2024

REJECTED

The popular story: “InVision neglected product R&D in favor of marketing.” InVision spent 2015–19 rebuilding its core product and designing its own editor. The work happened. It never shipped.

Read the full Figma case study →

188companies studied, winners and losers

66head-to-heads, winner vs. the rival it beat

130strategy concepts from Porter, Helmer, Christensen, Martin and more

Everyclaim cited inline, first-person sources first

Who it’s for

Anyone making, judging or learning strategy

Founders

Choose your market and the first thing to build

Product leaders

Give customers a reason to choose you, and to stay

Investors

Test whether a company’s moat will hold

Learning strategy

Learn the big ideas through companies you know

Head-to-heads

Why the winner won and the rival didn’t

Browse all 66 head-to-heads →

Netflix beat Blockbuster

A no-late-fee subscription Blockbuster couldn’t copy without giving up its late-fee income. Unlimited streaming then created new viewing on top of it.

Snowflake beat Amazon Redshift

Rebuilt the warehouse for the cloud, with storage separate from compute, then stayed neutral across all three clouds. Redshift was tied to AWS.

Novel Architecture Moat: Switching costs

Toast beat Revel Systems

Built only for busy restaurants and processed every card. That payments margin paid for the installs and on-site service that made each restaurant hard to move.

Vertical Specialization Moat: Switching costs

Procore Technologies beat PlanGrid

Priced by project rather than by seat, so every partner on the job joined free. Those partners became customers and brought in the next project team.

Novel Architecture Moat: Switching costs

Airbnb beat HomeAway

HomeAway organized second homes rented by the week. Airbnb opened a market that hadn’t existed: people’s own spare rooms, made safe to book from strangers.

Blue Ocean Strategy Moat: Marketplace network effects

Salesforce beat Siebel Systems (later Oracle Siebel CRM)

Ran one multi-tenant CRM for everyone and charged monthly, a model Siebel couldn’t adopt without undercutting its own licenses.

Managed Service Moat: Switching costs

Why Strategy Canon

Frameworks tell you what could work. Success stories tell you what happened. We show you why it worked.

Get the real reason, not the legend

We check the explanations everyone repeats against the record.

REJECTED“Uber won by defying local laws while Sidecar played it safe.” Sidecar launched private-car rides first, in 2012, and sued Austin in 2013.

See the road not taken

At every step of a winner’s path, you see what the rival did instead.

49 of 71times, the rival didn’t execute the same idea worse. It made a different choice at step one.

Spot what repeats across companies

Every company is tagged with the same concepts, so you can count what winners do that others don’t.

0 of 11companies that lost had any lock-in: no switching costs, trust or brand to keep customers.

The method

How we figure out how a company won

Read about the method →

1 · Source
Start with the people who were in the room
Founders, early employees, board members and filings. A source carries weight according to how close the speaker was to the decision.
2 · Chain
Lay out the moves from first innovation to moat
Three to five strategic moves, each one setting up the next. A chain is a sequence of mechanisms, not a timeline of events.
3 · Rival
Put the company it beat alongside
What the direct rival did at each step: chose differently, arrived late, built a weaker version or pulled back. Cited, like everything else.
4 · Count
Tag every move and compare across companies
Winners and losers are tagged with the same 130 concepts, so a pattern shows up only when the data supports it.

Strategy concepts

One map of strategy, built from the best thinkers and tested on real companies

Every great framework, in one vocabulary. Porter, Helmer, Christensen, Martin, Thompson, NFX and Neumann, merged concept by concept. Each page shows who named the idea and what they called it.
Laid out in the order you decide. Six layers, from the market you enter to the way you run the company. Each layer shapes the choices below it, so the map reads like a strategy process.
Shown working in real companies. Every concept links to the case studies where it appears, winners and losers alike.
Ready to use on your own company. Every concept ends with the question to ask of your own company.

Explore the full strategy map →

Defensibility · System rigidityConcept page preview

Switching costs

The customer expects to lose value by changing to an alternative for the next purchase.

Also named by

Helmer: Switching Costs, Power #4
Porter: An entry barrier that limits buyer power
Neumann: System rigidity
NFX: Embedding

How often it appears

Winners63%

Partial20%

Lost0%

Seen in

Slack · Figma · Snowflake · Procore Technologies · Toast

Ask of your company: What would it cost this customer — in money, time, risk and relationships — to leave? Is that cost growing with usage, or static?

Browse all 130 concepts

See how the layers connect on the full map →

Arena: What conditions shaped this business at entry?

Barriers to participation Specialist requirements Overserved customers High setup and upkeep costs Disconnected workflows Entrenched systems Information asymmetry Limited local selection Scattered supply Essential supplier control Regulatory constraints Regulatory shift Enabling technology shift Changing technical requirements

Intent: How do we choose to win, and what do we give up to do it?

Platform Strategy Aggregator Strategy Commoditize your complement Monopolize a Small Market First Vertical Specialization Developer-First Strategy Component Specialization Focus Strategy M&A Strategy Vertical Integration Strategy Founder Domain Expertise Corporate Spin-off How to win Operational Excellence Product Leadership Customer Intimacy Blue Ocean Strategy Blitzscaling Trade-offs & activity fit

Product Strategy: Why do customers choose the product, and keep choosing it?

Go-to-Market Strategy: How does the customer find it, start it, pay for it and buy more of it?

Operating Model: What keeps the choices in force as the firm learns?

Implementation Services Forward-Deployed Engineering Fulfillment Network Design Quality & feedback systems Customer Discovery Product/market fit Management systems Resource allocation Experimentation cadence

Who’s behind it

Dave Whittemore

Two-time founder and product leader. Dave founded Practica, an AI coaching platform BetterUp acquired in 2024, then led Grow, BetterUp’s AI coaching product. Before that he led product at Thinkful, Lenda and OnDeck. Strategy Canon is the reference he wanted when making those calls himself.

About Dave and the project →