| | |  | Karl Long | Home » » On Competition | | | | | | | 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 | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780875847955
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Michael E. Porter | | Hardcover:
| 485 pages | | Publisher:
| Harvard Business School Press | | Publication Date:
| 1998-10 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0875847951 | | Package Length:
| 9.21 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.54 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.65 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.98 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 15 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 Read Everything Mr. Porter WritesAug 12, 2009
Mr. Porter is an expert on competition. As a professional investor, I evaluate competitive strengths and weaknesses of companies on everyday basis. I cannot overemphasize how important Mr. Porter's writings are to my ability to pick investments that perform well. In my opinion, the first chapter is the most important one. Mr. Porter writes about five forces:
* Threat of new entrants
* Intensity of rivalry among existing competitors
* Pressure from substitute products
* Bargaining power of buyers
* Bargaining power of suppliers
These five forces can be a roadmap to determining the competitiveness of individual companies. Mr. Porter's books are long, but I highly recommend this book or any other book written by the author.
Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Great Service, Excellent ProductFeb 15, 2008
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.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Even More Relevant and More Valuable TodayMay 29, 2006
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.
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Insightful!Jun 20, 2005
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.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Helpful Essays from a Corporate Strategy IconDec 07, 2002
This book is a collection of essays and articles by Michael Porter alone or with others. Most of them are collected from his writings in the Harvard Business Review although two are new to this book. Think of this as a "Porter's Greatest Hits" kind of thing. That is a bit misleading because his HBR articles are not exactly the same thing as his Competitive Advantage books although the topics are definitely related.The essays are grouped into three broad sections: 1) Competition and Strategy: Core Concepts, 2) The Competitiveness of Locations, and 3) Competitive Solutions to Societal Problems. Will you find each article of the same high quality? Probably not (again, like a greatest hits collection), but you will find them informative and thought provoking. It is impossible to study for an MBA nowadays without invoking "Porter's Five Forces" in your discussions of competitive and marketing strategy. This book can help add to your thinking and understanding of how every aspect of our life is in some way part of a competitive context and the ways it improves our standard of living. It will also help you improve your thinking in how to best strategize for and participate in competitive situations. It would be a mistake to think that Porter advocates for a Hobbesian nightmare of life being nasty, brutish and short. Rather, he is more or less helping us think through the nature of the way competition arises and how to best think about its sources and how to manage it and the traps to avoid. While Porter's model is used by some as a hammer that sees everything as a nail, it really needn't be used that way and, in its proper context, is very helpful.
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