Michael E. Porter
Porter is considered to be the
father of modern strategy.
Some ot Porter's popular studies are as
follows. Please follow the links for further information about Porter's
theories.
Biography of Michael Porter
Michael E. Porter is a leading
authority on competitive strategy, the competitiveness and economic
development of nations, states, and regions, and the application of
competitive principles to social problems such as health care, the
environment, and corporate responsibility.
He is the Bishop William Lawrence
University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. A University
professorship is the highest professional recognition that can be
awarded to a Harvard faculty member. In 2001, Harvard Business School
and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and
Competitiveness, dedicated to furthering Professor Porter’s work.
Professor Porter is generally
recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, as has been
identified in a variety of rankings and surveys as the world’s most
influential thinker on management and competitiveness.
He is the author of 17 books and over
125 articles. He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and
mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with
high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was
a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from
Harvard University in 1973.
Teaching
Professor Porter's ideas are the
foundation for courses on strategy and competitiveness, and his work is
taught at virtually every business school in the world.
At Harvard, Professor Porter’s course,
Microeconomics of Competitiveness, is a graduate course open to students
from across the university. It is also taught in partnership with more
than 80 other universities from every continent using curriculum, video
content and instructor support developed at Harvard.
Professor Porter developed and chairs
the New CEO Workshop, a Harvard Business School program for newly
appointed CEOs of the world’s largest and more complex corporations.
Held twice each year by invitation only, the workshop focuses on the
challenges facing new CEOs in assuming leadership. His Harvard Business
Review article with Jay Lorsch and Nitin Nohria, ‘Seven Surprises for
New CEOs’ (October 2004), describes some of the learning from this
ongoing body of work.
Professor Porter speaks widely on
strategy, competitiveness, health care delivery, related subjects to
business, government, non-profit, and philanthropic leaders.
Michael Porter's Research
Strategy
Professor Porter’s core field is
competitive strategy, which remains a major focus of his research. His
book, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and
Competitors, is in its 63rd printing and has been translated into 19
languages. His second major strategy book, Competitive Advantage:
Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, was published in 1985 and
is in its 38th printing. His book On Competition (1998) includes a
series of articles on strategy and competition, including the
award-winning Harvard Business Review article 'What is Strategy?',
published in 1996. An updated version of his article, 'The Five
Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy,' was published in early 2008.
Professor Porter’s next major book on strategy is in process.
Competitiveness of Nations and Regions
Professor Porter's 1990 book,
The Competitive Advantage of Nations, presents a new theory of how
nations and regions compete and their sources of economic prosperity.
Motivated by his appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the
President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness, the book has
guided economic policy in countless nations and regions. Subsequent
articles have expanded on the concept of clusters (geographic
concentrations of related industries that occur in particular fields)
and other aspects of the theory.
National Competitiveness
Professor Porter has published books
about national competitiveness on New Zealand, Canada, Sweden,
Switzerland, and Japan. His book Can Japan Compete? (2000) challenged
long-held views about the Japanese economic miracle.
Professor Porter chairs the Global
Competitiveness Report, an annual ranking of the competitiveness and
growth prospects of more than 120 countries published by the World
Economic Forum.
Clusters. Professor Porter’s ideas on
clusters, first introduced in 1990, have given rise to a large body of
theory and practice throughout the world. Cluster-based economic
development thinking has resulted in many hundreds of public-private
cluster initiatives in virtually every country. The article “Clusters
and Competition: New Agendas for Companies, Governments, and
Institutions” and On Competition (1998) provide a summary.
Regional Competitiveness
Professor Porter extended his work on
competitiveness to states, provinces, and other sub-national regions. He
led the Clusters of Innovation project which examined five major U.S.
regions developing new theory and methodologies. He created the Cluster
Mapping Project at Harvard, which provides rich data on the economic
geography of U.S. regions and clusters on a special web site. Professor
Porter’s methodology is the basis for comprehensive new data on the
economic geography of the 27 countries of the European Union. The
article ‘The Economic Performance of Regions’ (2003) summarizes some of
the important findings from this data as does a new paper, ‘Convergence,
Clusters and Economic Performance’ (2006), with Mercedes Delgado and
Scott Stern.
Innovation
Professor Porter is co-author (with
Professor Scott Stern and others) of a body of work on the sources of
innovation in national and regional economies, including The New
Challenge to America's Prosperity: Findings from the Innovation Index
(1999), 'The Determinants of National Innovative Capacity' (2000), and
'Measuring the 'Ideas' Production Function: Evidence from International
Patent Output' (2000).
Competition and Society
Professor Porter's third major body of
work has addressed the relationship between competition and society.
Economically Distressed Communities..
Professor Porter offered a new theory of urban economic development,
beginning with the Harvard Business Review article 'The Competitive
Advantage of the Inner City'. In 1994, he founded The Initiative for a
Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a non-profit, private-sector organization
to catalyze inner-city business development across the country.
Professor Porter is Chairman of the ICIC, a national organization that
works in cities across America. Related work by Professor Porter has
tackled economic development in rural areas.
The Natural Environment. Professor
Porter introduced a controversial theory that argued that environmental
progress and competitiveness were not inconsistent but complementary,
put forth in his Scientific American essay, 'America's Green Strategy',
and his article 'Toward a New Conception of the
Environment-Competitiveness Relationship' (1995). The “Porter
Hypothesis” has been the subject of more than 100 articles and has
spawned a rich literature. The theory is now widely accepted and is
guiding corporate practice and thinking about regulation.
Philanthropy and Corporate Social
Responsibility. Professor Porter has devoted growing attention to
philanthropy and the role of corporations in society. His Harvard
Business Review article with Mark Kramer, 'Philanthropy's New Agenda:
Creating Value' (1999), introduced a new framework for developing
strategy in foundations and other philanthropic organizations.
His Harvard Business Review article,
'The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy' (2002), focused on
how corporations can create more social benefit in their philanthropy.
His Harvard Business Review article with Mark Kramer, 'Strategy and
Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social
Responsibility' (2006), tackles the strategic underpinnings of corporate
social responsibility.
With Mark Kramer, Professor Porter
co-founded the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a non-profit
organization dedicated to creating concepts and measurement tools to
improve foundation performance. He also co-founded FSG-Social Impact
Advisors, an international non-profit firm that provides advice and
innovative ideas about social strategy to foundations, corporations, and
social service organizations.
Health Care Delivery
Since 2001, Professor Porter has
devoted considerable attention to competition in the health care system,
with a focus on improving health care delivery. His work with Professor
Elizabeth Teisberg, including the book Redefining Health Care: Creating
Value-Based Competition on Results (Harvard Business School Press,
2006), is influencing thinking and practice not only in the United
States but numerous other countries. Curriculum growing out of this
research is being taught at Harvard and elsewhere.
Advisor and Civic Organizations
Professor Porter has served as a
strategy advisor to top management in numerous leading U.S. and
international companies, among them Caterpillar, DuPont, Procter &
Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Scotts Miracle-Gro, SYSCO, and Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Professor Porter currently serves on
the board of directors of two public companies, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Corporation and Parametric Technology Corporation.
Professor Porter serves as senior
strategy advisor to the Boston Red Sox, a major league baseball team. He
has advised numerous educational and community organizations on
strategy.
Professor Porter is actively involved
in assisting governments in the United States and abroad. He plays an
active role in U.S. economic policy with the Executive Branch, Congress,
and international organizations. Professor Porter is a founding member
and member of the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness,
America’s leading private-sector competitiveness organization made up of
chief executive officers of major corporations, unions, and
universities. He also chairs the selection committee for the annual
Corporate Stewardship Award of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Professor Porter advises national
leaders in numerous countries on competitiveness including Armenia,
Colombia, Ireland, Nicaragua, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore,
Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. He has personally led major studies of
economic strategy for the governments of such countries as Canada,
India, Kazakhstan, Libya, New Zealand, Portugal, and Thailand.
Professor Porter’s thinking about
economic development for groups of neighboring countries has resulted in
a long-term initiative within Central America, including the formation
of the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable
Development (CLACDS), a permanent institution based in Costa Rica.
At the state and local level, Professor
Porter has worked extensively in his home state of Massachusetts and
numerous others. He has been honored by governments for his work in
Basque Country, Catalonia, Connecticut, and South Carolina. He chaired
the Governor’s Council on Economic Growth and Technology in
Massachusetts during the period when Massachusetts made dramatic
improvements in competitiveness.
Honors and Awards of Michael Porter
Professor Porter has been widely
recognized for his work. Some of these honors (in chronological order)
include Harvard's David A. Wells Prize in Economics (1973) for his
research in industrial organization. He received the Graham and Dodd
Award of the Financial Analysts Federation in 1980. His book Competitive
Advantage won the George R. Terry Book Award of the Academy of
Management in 1985 as the outstanding contribution to management
thought.
Professor Porter was elected a Fellow
of the International Academy of Management in 1985, a Fellow of the
Academy of Management in 1988, and a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy
of Engineering Sciences in 1991. In 1991, he received the Charles
Coolidge Parlin Award for outstanding contribution to the field of
marketing and strategy, given by the American Marketing Association.
Professor Porter was honored by the Massachusetts State Legislature in
1991 for his work on Massachusetts competitiveness.
In 1993, Professor Porter was named the
Richard D. Irwin Outstanding Educator in Business Policy and Strategy by
the Academy of Management.
He was the 1997 recipient of the Adam
Smith Award of the National Association of Business Economists, given in
recognition of his exceptional contributions to the business economics
profession. In 1998, he received the International Academy of
Management’s first-ever Distinguished Award for Contribution to the
Field of Management.
In 2001, the annual Porter Prize, akin
to the Deming Prize, was established in Japan in his name to recognize
Japan’s leading companies in terms of strategy.
In 2003, the Academy of Management
recognized Professor Porter with its highest award, for scholarly
contributions to management.
In 2005, Professor Porter became an
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. That year, he was
awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Medal (presented by the American
Agricultural Economics Association. That year, he was also honored by
the South Carolina legislature for his efforts in assisting and
promoting economic development in that state.
In 2007, Professor Porter’s book,
Redefining Health Care, was awarded the James A. Hamilton Award as the
outstanding health care book of the year.
Professor Porter has received six
McKinsey Awards for the best Harvard Business Review article of the
year, including an unprecedented four first-place awards.
Professor Porter has received honorary
doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics; Erasmus University
(the Netherlands); HEC (France); Universidada Tecnica de Lisboa
(Portugal); Adolfo Ibanez University (Chile); INCAE (Central America);
The University of Deusto (Basque Country); The University of Iceland;
Universidad de los Andes (Colombia); HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of
Management (Germany); Universidad San Martin de Porres (Peru); Johnson
and Wales University (United States); and Mt. Ida College (United
States).
Professor Porter has been awarded
national honors including the Creu de St. Jordi (Cross of St. George)
from Catalonia (Spain) and the Jose Dolores Estrada Order of Merit, the
highest civilian honor awarded by the Government of Nicaragua.
Personal History of Michael Porter
Professor Porter was born in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and lived and traveled throughout the world as the son of a
career Army officer. He was an all-state high school football and
baseball player. At Princeton, he played intercollegiate golf and was
New England champion. He was named to the 1968 NCAA Golf All-American
Team. After graduating from college, Professor Porter served through the
rank of captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He maintains a long-time
interest in the esthetics and business of music and art, having worked
on the problems of strategy with arts organizations and aspiring
musicians. He serves as a trustee of Buckingham, Browne & Nichols, an
independent school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Professor Porter
resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.
About Michael Porter
Michael Eugene Porter is an American
academic focused on management and economics. Born in France in 1945, he
now lives in Sweden. He is the founder of The Monitor Group. Porter has
made important contributions to strategic management and strategy
theory.[citation needed] Porter's main academic objectives focus on how
a firm or a region can build a competitive advantage and develop
competitive strategy.
Porter's strategic system consists
primarily of:
-
Porter's Five Forces Analysis
- strategic groups (also called
strategic sets)
- the value chain
- the generic strategies of cost
leadership, product differentiation, and focus
- the market positioning strategies
of variety based, needs based, and access based market positions.
- Porter's clusters of competence
for regional economic development
Key Works of Porter
- Porter, M. (1979) "How competitive
forces shape strategy", Harvard business Review, March/April 1979.
- Porter, M. (1980) Competitive
Strategy, Free Press, New York, 1980.
- Porter, M. (1985) Competitive
Advantage, Free Press, New York, 1985.
- Porter, M. (1987) "From
Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy", Harvard Business
Review, May/June 1987, pp 43-59.
- Porter, M. (1996) "What is
Strategy", Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec 1996.
- Porter, M. (1998) On Competition,
Boston: Harvard Business School, 1998.
- Porter, M. (1990, 1998) "The
Competitive Advantage of Nations", Free Press
- Porter, M. (2001) "Strategy and
the Internet", Harvard Business Review, March 2001, pp. 62-78.
- Porter, Micheal E. and Kramer,
Mark R. (2006) "Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive
Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility", Harvard Business
Review, December 2006, pp. 78-92.
- Porter, M. & Elizabeth Olmsted
Teisberg (2006) "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based
Competition On Results", Harvard Business School Press
Criticisms About Porter
Porter has been criticised by some
academics for inconsistent logical argument in his assertions. Critics
have also labelled Porter's conclusions as lacking in empirical support
and as justified with selective case studies.
References
http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=bio&facEmId=mporter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Porter
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