Electrifying in its simplicity - like all great breakthroughs - COMPETITIVE STRATEGY captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Author Michael 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. More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalised Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors and choose competitive positions. 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. Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century

Review: Journal of Business Strategy Any manager who studies and uses the material in this book should be able to devise more successful strategies. Strategic Management Journal Represents a quantum leap...may well be one of the most important contributions to the discipline of strategic management. Choice Few books warrant the too-common publisher's blurb "landmark." This one does. Highest recommendation. The New York Times American executives are grasping for a logic to global competition. Mr. Porter...has given them one. Philip Kotler author of Principles of Marketing Porter's books on competitive strategy are the seminal works in the field. Fortune Three overarching game plans that work in one industry after another explain how thousands of real-world competitors come out on top.

Author Biography: Michael E. Porter is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. The author of fourteen books and recipient of the Wells Prize in Economics, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.