Using a controlled experiment, the authors examined the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from competition. The subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attended publicly-funded single-sex and coeducational schools. Robust differences were found between the competitive choices of girls from single-sex and coed schools. Moreover, girls from single-sex schools behaved more like boys even when randomly assigned to mixed-sex experimental groups. Thus it was not supported that the average female avoids competitive behaviour more than the average male. This suggests that observed gender differences might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO leadership. This collection captures Porter's unique ability to bridge theory and practice. Each of the articles has not only shaped thinking, but also redefined the work of practitioners in its respective field. In an insightful new introduction, Porter relates each article to the whole of his thinking about competition and value creation, and traces how that thinking has deepened over time. This collection is organized by topic, allowing the reader easy access to the wide range of Porter's work. Parts I and II present the frameworks for which Porter is best known--frameworks that address how companies, as well as nations and regions, gain and sustain competitive advantage. Part III shows how strategic thinking can address society's most pressing challenges, from environmental sustainability to improving health-care delivery. Part IV explores how both nonprofits and corporations can create value for society more effectively by applying strategy principles to philanthropy. Part V explores the link between strategy and leadership.

Michael Porter presents a comprehensive structural framework and analytical techniques to help a firm to analyze its industry and evolution, understand its competitors and its own position, and translate this understanding into a competitive strategy to allow the firm to compete more effectively to strengthen its market position. The introduction reviews a classic approach to strategy formulation, one that comprises a combination of ends and means (policies), factors that limit what a company can accomplish, tests of consistency, and an approach for developing competitive strategy. A competitive strategy articulates a firm's goals, how it will compete, and its policies for achieving those goals. Competitive advantage is defined in terms of cost and differentiation while linking it to profitability. Part I, "General Analytical Techniques," provides a general framework for analyzing the structure of an industry and understanding the underlying forces of competition (and hence profitability). Five competitive forces act on an industry: (1) threat of new entrants, (2) intensity of rivalry among existing firms, (3) threat of substitute products or services, (4) bargaining power of buyers, and (5) bargaining power of suppliers. Looking at industry structure provides a way to consider how value is created and divided among existing and potential industry participants. One competitive force always captures essential issues in the division of value.There are three generic competitive strategies for coping with the five competitive forces: (1) overall cost leadership, (2) differentiation, and (3) focus. There are risks with each strategy. A firm without a strategy is "stuck in the middle." This framework for examining competition transcends particular industry, technology, or management theories. Building on this framework, techniques are presented for industry forecasting, analysis of competitors, predicting their behavior, and building a response profile. Essential for a competitive strategy are techniques for recognizing and accurately reading market signals. Implications of structural analysis for buyer selection and purchasing strategy are presented. Game theory provides concepts for responding to competitive moves. Using the concept of strategic groups, structural analysis can also explain differences in firm performance (profitability), provide a guide for competitive strategy, and predict industry evolution. Part II, "Generic Industry Environments," shows how firms can use the analytical framework to develop a competitive strategy in industry environments, which reflect differences in industry concentration, state of industry maturity, and exposure to international competition. These environments determine a business's competitive strategic context, available alternatives, and common strategic errors. Five generic industry environments are examined: fragmented industries (where level of industrial concentration is low), emerging industries, transition to industry maturity, declining industries, and global industries. In each, the crucial aspects of industry structure, key strategic issues, characteristic strategic alternatives (including divestment), and strategic pitfalls are identified. Part III, "Strategic Decisions," draws on the analytical framework to examine important types of strategic decisions confronting firms that compete in a single industry: vertical integration, major capacity expansion, and new business entry. Additional use of economic theory and administrative consideration of management and motivation helps a company to make key decisions, and gives insight into how competitors, customers, suppliers, and potential entrants might make them. Appendix A discusses use of techniques for portfolio analysis applied to competitor analysis. Appendix B provides approaches to conducting an industry study, including sources of field and published dat.

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights. After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts. This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

We extend the literature on competitive behaviour by investigating environments in which the choice to compete is not made by an individual themselves, but by someone else. Choosing on behalf of others is an integral part of life and gender may be an important factor in shaping the perceived suitability of individuals for career promotions in competitive environments. We assign subjects either the role of an agent or a principal in an experiment. Agents perform a real effort task and a randomly assigned principal chooses whether the agent performs under a piece rate or tournament incentive scheme. Before making a decision for the agent, we vary whether the principal is informed about the agent's gender or not. Regardless of whether gender is revealed, we find no gender gap in competitiveness when principals are choosing for agents. In terms of determinants of the principals' choices, we observe that expectations about their agent's performance, as well as the principal's own preferences for risk and competitiveness matter for the decision to make others compete. In addition, we replicate existing results reporting that women are less willing to enter the tournament than men when choosing themselves. We compare both decision environments and show that efficiency (defined as average performance and earnings) does not suffer, whereas the winners' performance is lower when principals decide for agents. Taken together, our results suggest that allowing others to decide has the potential to increase the representation of women in competitive situations, many of which resemble the labour market.

How to compete in the right space for greater profitability and growth The Internet, mobile technology, the ubiquity of information and the availability of big data have dramatically increased the speed and impact of success and failure. Companies today know that they must be competitive, but precisely where, and more importantly how, to compete is not always easy to identify—until now. Compete Smarter, Not Harder explains how to prioritize market opportunities so that a company's strengths in one area can be leveraged across multiple markets. Using cutting-edge academic research and extensive industry practice, author William Putsis outlines the strategic decisions needed to determine which space provides the best margins, overall profitability, and growth potential. Details a step-by-step process for strategic prioritization, from strategic market selection to the tactics of execution, providing competitive advantage across markets Written by Doctor William Putsis, a professor of marketing, economics, and business strategy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has consulted and led executive development efforts with leading companies throughout the world Prioritize with conviction. Make absolutely sure that all of your hard work goes toward the right space.

Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.