Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment. 
 More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing. 
 Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Business & Money

Porter, Michael E.

Economics

Free Press

With the publication of his best-selling books Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985), Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School established himself as the world's leading authority on competitive advantage. Now, at a time when economic performance rather than military might will be the index of national strength, Porter builds on the seminal ideas of his earlier works to explore what makes a nation's firms and industries competitive in global markets and propels a whole nation's economy. In so doing, he presents a brilliant new paradigm which, in addition to its practical applications, may well supplant the 200-year-old concept of "comparative advantage" in economic analysis of international competitiveness. 
 To write this important new work, Porter and his associates conducted in-country research in ten leading nations, closely studying the patterns of industry success as well as the company strategies and national policies that achieved it. The nations are Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The three leading industrial powers are included, as well as other nations intentionally varied in size, government policy toward industry, social philosophy, and geography. 
 Porter's research identifies the fundamental determinants of national competitive advantage in an industry, and how they work together as a system. He explains the important phenomenon of "clustering," in which related groups of successful firms and industries emerge in one nation to gain leading positions in the world market. Among the over 100 industries examined are the German chemical and printing industries, Swiss textile equipment and pharmaceuticals, Swedish mining equipment and truck manufacturing, Italian fabric and home appliances, and American computer software and movies. Building on his theory of national advantage in industries and clusters, Porter identifies the stages of competitive development through which entire national economies advance and decline. 
 Porter's finding are rich in implications for both firms and governments. He describes how a company can tap and extend its nation's advantages in international competition. He provides a blueprint for government policy to enhance national competitive advantage and also outlines the agendas in the years ahead for the nations studied. This is a work which will become the standard for all further discussions of global competition and the sources of the new wealth of nations.

Competitive Advantage of Nations

Biography & History

What fundamentally determines the profit potential of a business? What does a company do to protect its territory from another firm seeking to enter it? How is it able to forecast its future under shifting and uncertain conditions -- or predict how its rivals will behave under those same conditions? 
 Most firms must face strategic questions like these when planning their future. The decisions they make must be based upon a rigorous, thorough analysis of the competition. That analysis and those decisions are the subject of this broad and comprehensive casebook, the essential companion volume to Michael Porter's widely acclaimed Competitive Strategy. The focus here is the actual competitive strategies of companies in 18 important industries and the portrayal of the competitive situations they face. 
 The 26 indepth case studies provide the student with a laboratory in which to develop a working understanding of competition and the ability to identify the factors that shape the success or failure of a firm. Each case places the reader in a real-world business setting -- giving him the strategist's view of Kodak, for example, or General Electric -- and allows for the firsthand exploration of various problems involved in designing and implementing strategy. The reader must cope with making choices actual companies have faced. 
 A major theme of the book is that a firm can shape the roles of competition in its favor if it understands these rules in a sophisticated way. 
 Michael Porter first developed his ideas on competitive strategy in a famous course at the Harvard Business School. As described in Competitive Strategy, Porter finds three types of tools for strategy development. The first is the "general analytic techniques," applicable to any industry or competition, which allow an indepth analysis of such competitive issues as industry evolution, competition profiling, strategy toward suppliers and buyers, entry barriers, and market signals. The second is tools for analyzing "generic structure settings," or characteristic types of industry structures such as fragmented industries, global industries, and declining industries. The third is tools for making such strategic decisions as capacity expansion, integration, entry, divestment, and coalition. 
 Each of the 18 industries in Cases in Competitive Strategy provides an opportunity for analysis using these tools. The intent of the book is cumulative, building through successively complex situations to an overview of how, when, and why various offensive and defensive strategic decisions can and should be made. 
 Though the cases in Cases in Competitive Strategy are significant and informative when studied on their own, they were designed to be read and analyzed in combination with the companion volume, Competitive Strategy. Used this way, both the conceptual materials and the cases themselves are mutually reinforcing, establishing in the reader's mind the connection between the theory and the practice of competitive strategy formulation. No student of business strategy can afford to be without this broad-range series of applications of the most talked-about topic in business today.

CASES IN COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

Many argue that developing countries should now strive for greater Competitiveness. At the same time the term has been widely criticized for being a dangerous obsession: a vague code-word for pro-business, anti-worker, anti-environment, and anti-poor policies. This report is part of a series of Competitiveness Reports first published by the World Economic Forum in 1979. In this 2000 edition, co-authors Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner of Harvard University define Competitiveness more precisely as the ability to achieve rapid economic growth over a long time period. Michael Porter of Harvard University defines a competitiveness index that ranks countries on the ability to achieve high current productivity. The first is called the growth competitiveness index and the second is called the current competitiveness index. According to the growth index, countries are deemed Competitive if they score high on economic indicators that have been shown empirically to be related to recent cross-country growth rates. The rankings that come out of this process show that competitive countries do not tend to be high-inequality countries nor anti-environment countries. This book includes these two competitiveness rankings, an executive summary that describes the framework behind these two rankings, and further articles on globalization, economic creativity, the underpinnings of productivity, environment, the euro and education. The book also includes country-profiles that summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each country, and an extensive body of data from the Forum's executive opinion survey.

The Global Competitiveness Report 2000

Schwab, Klaus

Sachs, Jeffrey D.

Moore, Chris

Ryder, Brad

Warner, Andrew M.

Tudor, John M.

Vasquez, Daniel

Cornelius, Peter K.

Levinson, Macha

Oxford University Press

Why has the New Zealand economy underperformed over the last three decades? How did New Zealand end up one of the most indebted nations, when it was once prosperous through international trade? This book seeks to answer these questions by setting out a rigorous framework for the development of a more prosperous New Zealand economy and drawing on the findings of the "Porter Project," the largest research project ever undertaken into the sources of New Zealand's competitive advantage. This research examined the top twenty export industries, using a microeconomic approach as opposed to the traditional macroeconomic analysis.

Upgrading New Zealand's Competitive Advantage

Enright, Michael J.

Crocombe, Graham T.

With the publication of his best-selling books "Competitive Strategy (1980) and "Competitive Advantage (1985), Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School established himself as the world's leading authority on competitive advantage. Now, at a time when economic performance rather than military might will be the index of national strength, Porter builds on the seminal ideas of his earlier works to explore what makes a nation's firms and industries competitive in global markets and propels a whole nation's economy. In so doing, he presents a brilliant new paradigm which, in addition to its practical applications, may well supplant the 200-year-old concept of "comparative advantage" in economic analysis of international competitiveness. To write this important new work, Porter and his associates conducted in-country research in ten leading nations, closely studying the patterns of industry success as well as the company strategies and national policies that achieved it. The nations are Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The three leading industrial powers are included, as well as other nations intentionally varied in size, government policy toward industry, social philosophy, and geography. Porter's research identifies the fundamental determinants of national competitive advantage in an industry, and how they work together as a system. He explains the important phenomenon of "clustering," in which related groups of successful firms and industries emerge in one nation to gain leading positions in the world market. Among the over 100 industries examined are the German chemical and printing industries, Swisstextile equipment and pharmaceuticals, Swedish mining equipment and truck manufacturing, Italian fabric and home appliances, and American computer software and movies. Building on his theory of national advantage in industries and clusters, Porter identifies the stages of competitive development through which entire national economies advance and decline. Porter's finding are rich in implications for both firms and governments. He describes how a company can tap and extend its nation's advantages in international competition. He provides a blueprint for government policy to enhance national competitive advantage and also outlines the agendas in the years ahead for the nations studied. This is a work which will become the standard for all further discussions of global competition and the sources of the new wealth of nations.

The Competitive Advantage of Nations

The Macmillan Press Ltd.

Advantage Sweden explores the evolution of competitive firms, industries, and clusters of industries in the Swedish economy. It provides a new perspective on how and why Swedish firms have built world-leading positions in certain industries and industry clusters. The diamond model outlining a system of four fundamental determinants underlying international competitive advantage, is applied to Swedish firms and industries. The book shows how pressures and challenges in the home environment, rather than a static environment without competition and stringent demands, are the key to a long-run competitive advantage.

Advantage Sweden, 2nd edition

Etc.

Solvell, Orjan

Zander, Ivo

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

The Competitive Advantage of Nations is one of the most influential business and management books of all time. Michael Porter's research identified the fundamental determinants of national competitive advantage in an industry and how they work together to give international advantage. The findings are rich in implications for firms and governments and set the agenda for discussions of global competition. The book was an extraordinary achievement and had a profound effect upon management, policy-makers and academics worldwide. The core ideas of the book remain very relevant today and this new edition includes the original text in full with a new introduction by the author, which reviews the key themes and issues of the book in the light of subsequent developments. This book represents one of the very few must buys in business and management.

With the nations of the world becoming more interdependent, it is imperative to take international influences into account in understanding the organization of industry within a country. This book extends the structure/conduct/performance framework of analysis to present a fully specified simultaneous equation model of an open economy―Canada.By estimating a system of equations of all the major variables, the authors can identify which variables are dependent and which are independent. They are thus able to assess the relative importance of such factors as seller concentration, import competition, retailing structure, advertising expenditure, research and development spending, and technical and allocative efficiency in shaping the organization of industry in Canada. In addition, using both industry-level and firm-level data, the authors develop methods for assessing the effect of structural variables on diversification strategies and the consequences for market performance. They also study the effects of such variables on firms’ access to capital markets. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for government policy.

Competition in an Open Economy: A Model Applied to Canada (Harvard Economic Studies)

Scott, John T.

Caves, Richard E.

Spence, A. Michael

Harvard University Press

Interbrand Choice, Strategy, and Bilateral Market Power (Harvard Economic Studies)

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