Welcome to Industry Attractiveness Module Takeaways, where two HBS students — Montse and Joey — relive one of the most eye-opening parts of the RC Strategy course and try to make sense of it all.

In this fast-paced, caffeine-fueled episode, they travel from aluminum smelters in China to cola bottlers in America to AI labs battling for dominance in 2025, using classic strategy tools to decode why some industries mint profits while others bleed cash.

Along the way, they bring to life the ideas behind supply and demand, average non-sunk cost, Porter’s Five Forces, and the role of complements — showing how each framework helps reveal who captures value and why.

It’s an episode about more than econom ...