Product Description

For the past 15 years, Michael Porter's work has defined our fundamental understanding of competition and competitive strategy. Presented here for the first time as a collective whole are a dozen articles; two entirely new articles and ten of Porter's articles from the Harvard Business Review, as well as a framing introduction from Porter. As a collection, these essays assume a new strength and significance, with each piece augmenting and supporting a complete picture of Porter's perspective on modern competition. To read through this collection is to experience Porter at work: we see first hand as his important theories take shape, deepen, and evolve over time. Organized around three primary categories: Competition and Strategy: Core Concepts, The Competitiveness of Location, and Competitive Solutions to Societal Problems, these articles develop the building blocks that define competitive strategy as we know it. With his unique ability to bridge economics with management, Porter addresses the important issues of competition, from its relationship with environmental regulation to the counterintuitive role of geography in the global economy. At once eloquent and convincing, the enduring nature of these essays helps us to examine and understand the essence of competition. Among them are three McKinsey Award winners as well as the award-winning "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" and "The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City." This comprehensive volume represents the full scope of Porter's influential work with the Harvard Business Review. BACKCOVER "[Porter's] mission is to bring about an intellectual revolution: to infuse management with the rigour of economics; to elaborate upon economics with examples taken from real life; and, thus, to create a discipline that will enlighten academics and business practitioners alike." -The Economist "Michael Porter...is widely accepted as the world's most influential thinker on business strategy... Economics undergraduates, MBA students and business school lecturers all follow his work avidly, while managers search his books for clues on how to gain competitive advantage." --People Management "Porter is almost single-handedly laying to rest one of the most enduring tenets of international economics: the principle of comparative advantage. In its place he has developed an exhaustive theory of competitive advantage, one that he is using to teach companies, cities, regions, and nations-and, most recently, groups of nations acting in concert-how to compete on the world stage. Porter travels the globe to advise nonprofit institutions, corporate chieftains, and heads of state."--WorldBusiness

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32945 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 485 pages

Amazon.com Review
On Competition, a collection of works by Michael E. Porter, is a critical examination of the dog-eat-dog international economy. A Harvard Business School professor, Porter is one of the most respected and innovative economists of his time. Author of 15 books, he advises key elected officials and business leaders in all parts of the world. On Competition features 13 of his best articles over the past 15 years, including 2 new ones. The essence of Porter's message is that every company, country, and person must master competition to thrive in brutal international and domestic economies. Competition is the key to excellence. Worried about losing your job or your services becoming obsolete? Porter believes that a little fear is good for everyone. "Companies that value stability, obedient customers, dependent suppliers and sleepy competitors are inviting inertia and, ultimately, failure," he writes in his 1990 study and essay "The Competitive Advantage of Nations." Porter is a longtime critic of the short-term thinking on Wall Street that often stifles competition and hurts the economy. In "Capital Disadvantage: America's Failing Capital Investment System," he calls for much lower capital-gains rates for people who invest for the long term. He also urges investors and businesses to start thinking together. He contends that pension funds and institutional investors should get a greater say over the companies they own. It's wacky to have company directors with little expertise or financial interest in the company, he writes.

Porter is often unconventional and asserts that businessmen must be, too. In his essay "Green and Competitive," he shows little sympathy for businesses that complain about environmental regulations. Rules to protect the environment don't have to strangle companies--they can actually improve productivity with the right attitude and approach. Rhone-Poulenc, a French chemical and drug company, proved this when it stopped incinerating a certain byproduct and began selling it as an additive for dyes and tanning. Readable and provocative, On Competition is vital for business, government, and financial leaders as well as small-business people and investors. --Dan Ring

From Publishers Weekly
Twenty years of studying industry performance and competitiveness have convinced Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a noted authority on competition and corporate strategy, that a successful company must not only adopt the best practices available but also differentiate itself from its rivals. In 13 essays, some of which have appeared elsewhere, Porter elegantly lays out a sophisticated analytical framework for assessing the challenges firms face in today's business environment. Although Porter offers no magic formula for success, as a starting point for developing a long-term strategy, he does recommend close scrutiny of "factor conditions," "demand conditions," other competing and supporting industries and existing strategies and structures. Porter shows how companies have bested international competitors by forging integrated global strategies, operating with a long-term outlook, investing aggressively and managing factories carefully. He has also come to see the growing importance of geographical location to specific companies and celebrates the benefits of clustersAsystems of interconnected firms and institutionsAfor increased productivity and innovation. On the societal level, Porter's work, with its emphasis on long-term planning, brings a welcome new perspective to perennially thorny policy issues such as environmental protection, inner-city development and universal access to health care. While this book requires a serious investment of time and effort, its expert dissection of a very complex phenomenon is worth it. Line drawings throughout.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
These 13 seminal essays are by the erudite Harvard Business School professor who has spent nearly two decades trying to "develop both rigorous and useful frameworks for understanding competition that effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Great Service, Excellent Product
I am new to buying used copies through Amazon, so I orignally had some doubts. However, the experience I had with this purchase suprised me in that it was delivered a lot quicker than I expected it, and the book was in great condition. I thank the distributer for displaying such great service and will look foward to making any purchases in the future.

Even More Relevant and More Valuable Today

I read this book when it was first published (in 1979) and recently re-read it prior to reading his most recent work, Redefining Health Care which I will also review in the near future. In the Introduction (which then became the first chapter of Competitive Strategy, published in 1980), Porter observes that competition "has intensified over the last decades, in virtually all parts of the world." That is even more true of competition - especially global competition -- during the 27 years since Porter shared that observation. Nonetheless, the core concepts which he and his collaborators rigorously examine remain relevant...indeed, in my opinion, have become even more relevant. Consider these assertions:

1. Competition shapes strategy

2. Successful strategy creates a "fit" among all organizational activities

3. Information can provide a decisive competitive advantage

4. Declining industries require an "end-game" strategy

5. Successful corporate strategy "builds" on three premises: Competition occurs at the business unit level, diversification inevitably adds costs and constraints to business units, and, shareholders can readily diversify themselves.

6. "Moving from competitive strategy to corporate strategy is the business equivalent of passing through the Bermuda Triangle."

Porter carefully organizes the material within three Parts: First, he focuses on competition and strategy for companies at both the level of a single industry and then for multinational or diversified companies; next, he addresses the role of location in competition; and then he Part III, he addresses some important societal issues (e.g. environment, urban poverty, health care, and income inequality), each of which he asserts - and I wholly agree - is "inextricably bound up with economics and, more specifically, with competition."

All but two of the articles originally appeared in Harvard Business Review, the exceptions being "Clusters and Competition: New Agendas for Companies, Governments, and Institutions" and "Competing Across Locations: Enhancing Competitive Advantage through a Global Strategy." In the former, Porter explains his concept of clusters, clusters which are geographic concentrations of firms, suppliers, related industries, and specialized institutions that occur in a particular field in a nation, state, or city. In the latter, Porter brings together the two dimensions of international strategy - location and global networks. As he observes, "The concept of activities, so important to understanding competitive advantage in general terms, provides the basic framework for international strategy as well."

This is by no means an "easy read" but it will generously reward those who read it with appropriate care. By all accounts, Michael Porter is among the most influential and productive knowledge leaders, justly renowned for his cutting-edge thinking on the subject of strategy formulation and implementation but in this volume and in countless others, he also has much of great value to say about competitive and corporate strategy insofar as their global impact is concerned. That said, many of his greatest concerns are those specifically related to the U.S. economy. Hence the importance to me of what he and his collaborators (Claas van der Linde, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, and Gregory B. Brown) have to say in Part III: "Competitive Solutions to Societal Problems."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Porter's other works as well as two recently published books: Kenichi Ohmae's The Next Global Stage and C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Insightful!
Remember when you were a youthful entrepreneur operating a neighborhood lemonade stand? If author Michael E. Porter had walked up to buy a cup of punch from you, he probably would have asked about your business strategy. While you poured, he would have questioned what made your lemonade different from anyone else's. If he liked your lemonade, he'd no doubt give you suggestions on how to earn millions competing in the global marketplace. Ah, if only you had listened... The author, America's dean of competition, has spent two decades asking seminal questions such as, "What is competition? What are its effects? How can society benefit?" The Harvard Business Review previously published 11 of the 13 articles collected in this book. In the two new essays, Porter serves up invaluable concepts. His take on the growing importance of location, despite rising globalization, is a tour de force. Oddly, Porter sees no inconsistency in encouraging "productive competition" in the health care industry while advocating universal health care. For Porter, competition is the ingredient that turns lemons into lemonade. We recommend his latest book to any corporate strategist who seeks ideas on becoming more competitive, starting in your own neighborhood.