THE 18 BEST BUSINESS STRATEGY PROMPTS

You are a strategy consultant running a Porter's Five Forces analysis on [MARKET].

CONTEXT
- Our position: [CONTEXT].
- What we are deciding: [DECISION].

TASK
Assess the structural attractiveness of this market.

DELIVERABLES
For each force - rivalry, new entrants, supplier power, buyer power, substitutes - give the specific dynamics at play and how strong the force is, with the reasoning. Then state the single biggest structural threat and the single biggest structural opportunity for us.

CONSTRAINTS
- Be specific to this market; generic textbook descriptions are banned.
- Label any market figure as [SOURCED] or [ASSUMED]; invent nothing.
- End with what this means for [DECISION], not just the analysis.

You are a product strategist running a Jobs-to-be-Done analysis for [COMPANY].

CONTEXT
- Our product and who uses it: [CONTEXT].
- What we want to understand: [GOAL].

TASK
Define the real jobs customers hire us for.

DELIVERABLES
1. The core functional job, plus the emotional and social jobs around it.
2. The full set of alternatives a customer considers - including non-consumption and workarounds, not just direct competitors.
3. Where current solutions (including ours) underserve or overserve the job.
4. The most promising underserved job we could own.

CONSTRAINTS
- Describe customers by the job and the situation, not by demographics.
- Treat "doing nothing" and manual workarounds as real competitors.
- Ground each job in observable behavior, not assumed motivation.

You are a go-to-market strategist sharpening our ideal customer profile.

CONTEXT
- Who we sell to today: [CONTEXT].
- Our goal: [GOAL].

TASK
Define the ICP we should concentrate resources on.

DELIVERABLES
1. The profile of the customer we serve best, defined by their situation, trigger, and the value they get.
2. The signals that identify this customer early.
3. The customers we should explicitly de-prioritize or decline, and why.
4. What changes about our strategy if we commit fully to this ICP.

CONSTRAINTS
- A profile that includes everyone is a failure; force real exclusions.
- Distinguish the customer we are best for from the customer who is easiest to sell.
- Tie the ICP to where we actually win, not where the market is biggest.

You are an investor stress-testing the defensibility of [COMPANY].

CONTEXT
- The business and how it makes money: [CONTEXT].
- The threat we are worried about: [DECISION].

TASK
Audit our real moat.

DELIVERABLES
1. The sources of durable advantage we actually have (scale, switching costs, network effects, brand, proprietary data, regulatory) - with evidence for each.
2. The "advantages" that are not really moats because a funded competitor could replicate them.
3. The single greatest threat to our defensibility.
4. What we would have to build to create a moat we do not yet have.

CONSTRAINTS
- Be skeptical; a feature, a head start, or "great execution" is not a moat.
- Distinguish a moat that compounds from one that erodes.
- Name the specific competitor move that would hurt most.

You are a corporate strategist assessing whether [COMPANY] should enter [MARKET].

CONTEXT
- Why we are considering it: [CONTEXT].
- What success would require: [GOAL].

TASK
Assess this market entry honestly.

DELIVERABLES
1. The strategic case for entering, at its strongest.
2. The reasons not to enter, also at full strength - including what we would have to be right about.
3. Our realistic right to win here versus incumbents and other entrants.
4. A go / no-go recommendation and the cheapest experiment to de-risk it before committing.

CONSTRAINTS
- Argue the no-go case as hard as the go case.
- Do not invent the market size; label any figure as sourced or assumed.
- Weight our actual right to win over the market's attractiveness.

You are a strategy advisor on a build-buy-partner decision for [COMPANY].

CONTEXT
- The capability we need: [CONTEXT].
- Why it matters and by when: [GOAL].

TASK
Recommend how to acquire this capability.

DELIVERABLES
1. The three options - build, buy, partner - each with its real cost, speed, and control tradeoff.
2. Which option fits our actual constraints and how core this capability is to our strategy.
3. A recommendation, with the single biggest risk of that path.
4. The condition under which you would switch to a different option.

CONSTRAINTS
- Do not default to "build" for capabilities that are not core differentiators.
- Account for the full cost of building, including maintenance and opportunity cost.
- Tie the recommendation to how strategic the capability is, not just to cost.

You are a CEO's advisor allocating scarce resources across competing bets.

CONTEXT
- The bets competing for resources: [CONTEXT].
- Our strategic goal: [GOAL].

TASK
Recommend how to allocate resources.

DELIVERABLES
1. The bets ranked by expected strategic return relative to resources required.
2. The one or two bets that deserve concentration rather than even spreading.
3. What we should explicitly starve or stop to fund the priorities.
4. The leading indicator that would tell us a bet is working or failing.

CONSTRAINTS
- Even allocation is usually a failure of nerve; force concentration.
- Something must be defunded; a plan that funds everything is rejected.
- Tie allocation to strategic return, not to which team argues hardest.

You are a pricing strategist designing the pricing approach for [COMPANY].

CONTEXT
- What we sell and to whom: [CONTEXT].
- The value it creates for the customer: [GOAL].

TASK
Recommend a pricing strategy grounded in value.

DELIVERABLES
1. The value the customer gets, quantified where possible, as the anchor for price.
2. The pricing model that best fits (per seat, usage, outcome, tiered) and why.
3. How to capture more value from high-value customers without losing the rest.
4. The main risk in this pricing approach and how to test it before rolling out.

CONSTRAINTS
- Anchor on value to the customer, not on our cost or on undercutting rivals.
- Do not invent willingness-to-pay numbers; frame them as hypotheses to test.
- Flag where the pricing model could be gamed or create bad incentives.

You are a strategist building a value curve for [COMPANY] against [MARKET].

CONTEXT
- The factors customers compete on in this market: [CONTEXT].
- Our goal: [GOAL].

TASK
Map our competitive profile and find a differentiated curve.

DELIVERABLES
1. The factors of competition in this market, and how we and key rivals score on each.
2. Where everyone clusters (the factors that no longer differentiate anyone).
3. What we could raise, create, reduce, or eliminate to break from the pack.
4. The resulting differentiated position and who it would win.

CONSTRAINTS
- Matching competitors on every factor is a non-strategy; force real divergence.
- Be honest where we are behind, not just where we lead.
- Tie the new curve to a customer who would switch because of it.

You are an investor stress-testing the business model of [COMPANY].

CONTEXT
- How the business makes and spends money: [CONTEXT].
- What we want to scale toward: [GOAL].

TASK
Test whether this model works at scale.

DELIVERABLES
1. The core unit economics, with each input labeled sourced or assumed.
2. The assumption that, if wrong, breaks the model.
3. What happens to the economics as we scale - what improves, what gets worse.
4. The single metric to watch as the early signal that the model is or is not working.

CONSTRAINTS
- Do not accept rosy assumptions; identify which are load-bearing.
- Distinguish economics that improve with scale from those that degrade.
- Flag any number that is an estimate rather than a measured figure.

You are a strategy communicator crafting the narrative for [COMPANY]'s strategy.

CONTEXT
- The strategy in rough form: [CONTEXT].
- Who needs to believe it: [GOAL].

TASK
Build the strategic narrative.

DELIVERABLES
1. The one-sentence statement of the strategy: where we play, how we win, and why now.
2. The three-part story: the shift happening in the world, why it creates an opening, and why we are the ones to take it.
3. The strongest objection a smart skeptic would raise, and the honest answer.
4. The single line that should anchor every retelling.

CONSTRAINTS
- Specific enough that a competitor could not paste their name into it.
- No hype; the narrative must survive a skeptical board, not a pep rally.
- If the strategy cannot be stated clearly in one sentence, say so - that is a finding.

You are a strategy operator turning [COMPANY]'s strategy into objectives.

CONTEXT
- The strategy: [CONTEXT].
- The period we are planning: [GOAL].

TASK
Cascade the strategy into measurable goals.

DELIVERABLES
1. The two or three objectives that, if achieved, mean the strategy is working.
2. For each, the few measurable results that prove progress.
3. The metrics we will deliberately NOT chase this period, to protect focus.
4. The one objective that matters most if we can only fully resource one.

CONSTRAINTS
- Fewer objectives, not more; a long list is a failure of prioritization.
- Every objective must trace directly to the strategy, not to departmental wish-lists.
- Choose measures that are hard to game.

You are a strategy analyst auditing the assumptions under [COMPANY]'s strategy.

CONTEXT
- The strategy and the bet it represents: [CONTEXT].

TASK
Expose what has to be true for this strategy to work.

DELIVERABLES
1. The load-bearing assumptions, separated into facts, reasonable beliefs, and hopes.
2. The assumption that is both most uncertain and most damaging if wrong.
3. For the riskiest assumptions, the cheapest way to test each.
4. What we should validate before committing further.

CONSTRAINTS
- Be ruthless about which "facts" are actually assumptions.
- Rank by uncertainty times impact, not by how comfortable each is to question.
- Do not let an assumption pass just because it is widely shared.

You are a scenario planner testing [COMPANY]'s strategy against an uncertain future.

CONTEXT
- The strategy: [CONTEXT].
- The big uncertainties that could shift our world: [GOAL].

TASK
Stress the strategy against multiple futures.

DELIVERABLES
1. Three genuinely different, plausible scenarios for our market over the relevant horizon.
2. How our current strategy fares in each.
3. The move that is robust across most scenarios versus the moves that only work in one.
4. The early signal that would tell us which scenario is unfolding.

CONSTRAINTS
- Make the scenarios distinct, not three shades of the expected case.
- Favor robust moves over bets that need one specific future.
- Tie each scenario to observable signals we could actually track.

You are running a pre-mortem on [COMPANY]'s strategic bet.

CONTEXT
- The bet: [CONTEXT].
- What we are counting on: [GOAL].

TASK
Assume it is two years later and this clearly failed. Explain why.

DELIVERABLES
1. The three most likely failure causes, ranked by damage.
2. The early warning sign for each.
3. The assumption whose failure would be most catastrophic.
4. The single cheapest action now that most reduces the biggest risk.

CONSTRAINTS
- Attack the real plan, not a strawman of it.
- Be concrete about failure modes; "poor execution" is not an answer.
- If the bet is genuinely sound, say which residual risks are acceptable.

You are war-gaming competitor responses to [COMPANY]'s planned move.

CONTEXT
- The move we plan to make: [CONTEXT].
- The main competitors who would react: [GOAL].

TASK
Anticipate the competitive response.

DELIVERABLES
1. For each key competitor, their most likely response and how fast it would come.
2. The response that would hurt us most, and how likely it is.
3. Our counter to that worst-case response, prepared in advance.
4. Whether our move still makes sense once rivals react - or whether their reaction neutralizes it.

CONSTRAINTS
- Assume competitors are rational and will defend their position.
- Plan for their second move, not just their first reaction.
- If a likely response neutralizes our move, say so plainly.

You are a strategy advisor forced to argue both sides of a decision before recommending.

CONTEXT
- The decision: [DECISION].
- The context and stakes: [CONTEXT].

TASK
Steelman each side, then recommend.

DELIVERABLES
1. The strongest honest case for option A.
2. The strongest honest case for the alternative.
3. The crux: the one question whose answer should decide it.
4. A clear recommendation, with the evidence that would flip it.

CONSTRAINTS
- Make both cases genuinely strong; do not rig one to win.
- Identify the real crux rather than listing pros and cons.
- Commit to a recommendation; "it depends" without a crux is a failure.

You are a chief of staff writing a strategy decision memo for [COMPANY]'s board.

CONTEXT
- The decision: [DECISION].
- The analysis behind it: [CONTEXT].

TASK
Write a board-ready decision memo, not a report.

DELIVERABLES
1. Recommendation up front, in two sentences.
2. The strategic rationale: the three reasons it is right, one line each.
3. The strongest argument against, stated fairly, and why it does or does not change the call.
4. Key assumptions and what would falsify them.
5. The decision being requested and the resources it needs.

CONSTRAINTS
- Lead with the recommendation; never make the board hunt for it.
- Label every figure as sourced or estimated.
- Keep it under 400 words; a board memo is a decision tool, not a deck.