This collection highlights the most important ideas and concepts from Michael E. Porter, recognized worldwide as the leading thinker on strategy. Porter heads The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness based at Harvard Business School and is the foremost authority on competitive strategy for business, as well as on the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. Business readers will recognize Porter’s seminal book, On Competition, as a classic in the field. This set, curated by Harvard Business Review, includes the full digital edition of the updated and expanded edition of On Competition—a must-have for anyone interested in or studying the topic of strategy and for those developing strategy for their own organizations. The collection also includes the digital edition of the popular Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy, which offers a concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionary thinking and was written with Porter’s full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review. Finally, the set features the newer foundational article “Creating Shared Value,” which was published in Harvard Business Review in 2011 to great fanfare and global accolades. This must-have collection is for anyone serious about business, strategy, and competitiveness.

A guide to Michael Porters thinking on competition and strategy, classic and current.

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.

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.

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.

How legacy firms can combine their traditional strengths with the power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy for the digital era. How can legacy firms remain relevant in the digital era? In The Future of Competitive Strategy, strategic management expert Mohan Subramaniam explains how firms can leverage both their traditional strengths and the modern-day power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy. Drawing on the experiences of a range of companies, including Caterpillar, Sleep Number, and Whirlpool, he explains how firms can benefit from data’s enlarged role in modern business, develop digital ecosystems tailored to their unique business needs, and use new frameworks to harness the power of data for competitive advantage. Subramaniam presents digital ecosystems as a combination of production and consumption ecosystems, which can be used by legacy firms to unlock the value of data at various levels—from improving operational efficiencies to creating new data-driven services and transforming traditional products into digital platforms. He explores the ways sensors and the Internet of Things provide new kinds of customer data; presents the concept of digital competitors—other firms that have access to similar data; discusses the new digital capabilities that firms need to develop; and addresses privacy and security issues associated with data sharing. Who needs this book? Any firm that wants to revitalize traditional business models, offer a richer customer experience, and expand its competitive arena into new digital ecosystems.

Examines patterns of international competition since the 1960s.