Michael Eugene Porter

Born	May 23, 1947 (age 67) Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Alma mater	Princeton University Harvard Business School
Contributions	Porter forces[1]

Michael Eugene Porter (born May 23, 1947)^[2] is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, based at the Harvard Business School. He is a leading authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. Michael Porter's work is recognized in many governments, corporations and academic circles globally. He chairs Harvard Business School's program dedicated for newly appointed CEOs of very large corporations.

Early life

Michael Eugene Porter received a BSE with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he graduated first in his class and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an MBA with high distinction in 1971 from Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a PhD in business economics from Harvard University in 1973.

Porter said in an interview that he first became interested in competition through sports. He was on the NCAA championship golf squad at Princeton and also played football, baseball and basketball growing up.^[3]

Porter credits Harvard professor Roland "Chris" Christensen with inspiring him and encouraging him to speak up during class, hand-writing Porter a note that began: "Mr. Porter, you have a lot to contribute in class and I hope you will." Porter reached the top of the class by the second year at Harvard Business School.^[3]

At Harvard, Porter took classes in industrial organization economics, which attempts to model the effect of competitive forces on industries and their profitability. This study inspired the Porter five forces analysis framework for analyzing industries.^[3]

Career

Michael Porter is the author of 18 books and numerous articles including Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Competitive Advantage of Nations, and On Competition. A six-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, Professor Porter is the most cited author in business and economics.^[4]

Porter stated in a 2010 interview: "What I've come to see as probably my greatest gift is the ability to take an extraordinarily complex, integrated, multidimensional problem and get arms around it conceptually in a way that helps, that informs and empowers practitioners to actually do things."^[3]

Business strategy

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Michael Porter's core field is competition and company strategy. He is generally recognized as one of the intellectual leaders of the modern strategy field and his ideas are taught in virtually every business school in the world. His work has also re-defined thinking about competitiveness, economic development, economically distressed urban communities, environmental policy, and the role of corporations in society.

His main academic objectives focus on how a firm or a region can build a competitive advantage and develop competitive strategy; the competitiveness of nations, regions and cities; and solutions to social problems. He is also a Fellow Member of the Strategic Management Society. One of his most significant contributions is the five forces. Porter's strategic system consists primarily of:

• Competitive advantage, which describes how companies choose to be lower cost or differentiated relative to rivals;
• Porter five forces analysis, a framework for describing factors that affect the profitability and attractiveness of industries;
• Strategic groups (also called strategic sets);
• Value chain, which explains how organizational activities contribute to strategy;
• Generic strategies of cost leadership, product differentiation, and focus, based on choices regarding competitive scope and competitive advantage;
• Market positioning strategies of variety based, needs based, and access based market positions;
• Global strategy
• Porter's clusters of competence for regional economic development;
• Diamond model, a framework for understanding why particular nations are more competitive; and
• Porter's four corners model

Competition among nations

Porter wrote "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" in 1990. The book is based on studies of ten nations and argues that a key to national wealth and advantage was the productivity of firms and workers collectively, and that the national and regional environment supports that productivity. He proposed the "diamond" framework, a mutually-reinforcing system of four factors that determine national advantage: factor conditions; demand conditions; related or supporting industries; and firm strategy, structure and rivalry. Information, incentives, and infrastructure were also key to that productivity.^[5]

During April 2014, Porter discussed how the United States ranks relative to other countries on a comprehensive scorecard called "The Social Progress Index", an effort which he co-authored.^[6] This scorecard rated the U.S. on a comprehensive set of metrics; overall, the U.S. placed 16th.^[7]

Healthcare

Porter has devoted considerable attention to understanding and addressing the pressing problems in health care delivery in the United States and other countries. His book, Redefining Health Care (written with Elizabeth Teisberg), develops a new strategic framework for transforming the value delivered by the health care system, with implications for providers, health plans, employers, and government, among other actors. The book received the James A. Hamilton award of the American College of Healthcare Executives in 2007 for book of the year. His New England Journal of Medicine research article, "A Strategy for Health Care Reform—Toward a Value-Based System" (July 2009), lays out a health reform strategy for the U.S. His work on health care is being extended to address the problems of health care delivery in developing countries, in collaboration with Dr. Jim Yong Kim and the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.

Consulting

In addition to his research, writing, and teaching, Porter serves as an advisor to business, government, and the social sector. He has served as strategy advisor to numerous leading U.S. and international companies, including Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble,^[8] Scotts Miracle-Gro, Royal Dutch Shell, and Taiwan Semiconductor. Professor Porter serves on two public boards of directors, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Parametric Technology Corporation. Professor Porter also plays an active role in U.S. economic policy with the Executive Branch and Congress, and has led national economic strategy programs in numerous countries. He is currently working with the presidents of Rwanda and South Korea.

Michael Porter is one of the founders of The Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm that came under scrutiny in 2011 for its past contracts with the Muammar Gaddafi-led regime in Libya and alleged failure to register its activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In 2013 Monitor was sold to Deloitte Consulting through a structured bankruptcy proceeding.

Non-profit

Michael Porter has founded three major non-profit organizations: Initiative for a Competitive Inner City – ICIC^[9] in 1994, which addresses economic development in distressed urban communities; the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which creates rigorous tools for measuring foundation effectiveness; and FSG-Social Impact Advisors, a leading non-profit strategy firm serving NGOs, corporations, and foundations in the area of creating social value. He also currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University.

Honors and awards

In 2000, Michael Porter was appointed a Harvard University Professor, the highest professional recognition that can be awarded to a Harvard faculty member.^[10] In 2009, he was awarded an honorary degree from McGill University.

Criticisms

Porter has been criticized by some academics for inconsistent logical argument in his assertions.^[11] Critics have also labeled Porter's conclusions as lacking in empirical support and as justified with selective case studies. They have also claimed that Porter fails to credit original creators of his postulates originating from pure microeconomic theory. ^{[12][13][14][15]} Others have argued Porter's firm-level analysis is widely misunderstood and mis-taught. ^[16]

Works

Competitive Strategy

• Porter, M.E. (1979) "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy", Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979.
• Porter, M.E. (1980) Competitive Strategy, Free Press, New York, 1980. The book was voted the ninth most influential management book of the 20th century in a poll of the Fellows of the Academy of Management.^[17]
• Porter, M.E. (1985) Competitive Advantage, Free Press, New York, 1985.
• Porter, M.E. (ed.) (1986) Competition in Global Industries, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1986.
• Porter, M.E. (1987) "From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy", Harvard Business Review, May/June 1987, pp 43–59.
• Porter, M.E. (1996) "What is Strategy", Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec 1996.
• Porter, M.E. (1998) On Competition, Boston: Harvard Business School, 1998.
• Porter, M.E. (1990, 1998) "The Competitive Advantage of Nations", Free Press, New York, 1990.
• Porter, M.E. (1991) "Towards a Dynamic Theory of Strategy", Strategic Management Journal, 12 (Winter Special Issue), pp. 95–117. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.4250121008/abstract
• McGahan, A.M. & Porter, M.E. Porter. (1997) "How Much Does Industry Matter, Really?" Strategic Management Journal, 18 (Summer Special Issue), pp. 15–30. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199707)18:1%2B%3C15::AID-SMJ916%3E3.0.CO;2-1/abstract
• Porter, M.E. (2001) "Strategy and the Internet", Harvard Business Review, March 2001, pp. 62–78.
• Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R. (2006) "Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility", Harvard Business Review, December 2006, pp. 78–92.
• Porter, M.E. (2008) "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy", Harvard Business Review, January 2008, pp. 79–93.
• Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R. (2011) "Creating Shared Value," Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb 2011, Vol. 89 Issue 1/2, pp 62–77

Domestic Health Care

• Porter, M.E. & Teisberg, E.O. (2006) "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition On Results", Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
• Berwick, DM, Jain SH, and Porter ME. "Clinical Registries: The Opportunity For The Nation." Health Affairs Blogs, May 2011.

Global Health Care

• Jain SH, Weintraub R, Rhatigan J, Porter ME, Kim JY. "Delivering Global Health". Student British Medical Journal 2008; 16:27.[1]
• Kim JY, Rhatigan J, Jain SH, Weintraub R, Porter ME. "From a declaration of values to the creation of value in global health: a report from Harvard University's Global Health Delivery Project". Global Public Health. 2010 Mar; 5(2):181-8.
• Rhatigan, Joseph, Sachin H Jain, Joia S. Mukherjee, and Michael E. Porter. "Applying the Care Delivery Value Chain: HIV/AIDS Care in Resource Poor Settings." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 09-093, February 2009.

See also

• Cluster development
• Marketing strategies
• National Diamond
• Strategic planning
• Strategic management
• Social Progress Index
• Techno cluster

References

External links

• Michael Porter currently leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School – Accessed October 15, 2012
• Porter proposals for reforming the delivery of health care – Accessed October 15, 2012
• Summary Biography from Global Leaders
• Biography at Harvard Business School Faculty Pages – Accessed October 15, 2012
• Porter Prize
• Michael Porter's Author profile and bibliography from Shelfari – Accessed October 15, 2012