Michael E. Porter

Widely recognised as the father of modern business strategy, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter is the world's most influential thinker on competitive strategy and international competitiveness, and speaks widely on these topics to business and government audiences throughout the world.

Today, according to Fortune magazine, he has “influenced more executives – and more nations – than any other business professor on earth”.

He also leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, created jointly in 2000 by Harvard University and Harvard Business School to provide a home for his research.

Throughout his career at Harvard Business School, he has brought economic theory and strategy concepts to bear on many of the most challenging problems facing corporations, economies and societies, including market competition and company strategy, economic development, political competition, the environment, and health care.

His approach is based on understanding the overall economics and structure of complex systems, in contrast to particular elements or parts. His extensive research is widely recognised in governments, corporations, NGOs, and academic circles around the globe.

His research has received numerous awards, and he is the most cited scholar today in economics and business. While Michael Porter is at the core a scholar, his work has achieved remarkable acceptance by practitioners across multiple fields. He is also an unprecedented seven-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. In 2016, he was awarded the Sheth Medal for enduring and transformational contributions to marketing scholarship and marketing practice.

His work forms the foundation of Harvard's required course on strategy and appears in the course content of virtually every business school in the world. He leads Harvard's executive education programs for CEO's of billion-dollar and larger corporations. Michael Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at the Harvard Business School.

Professor Porter has authored 19 books and more than 130 articles, and has produced bodies of work in several subcategories of competition, including the influence of location on competition, the role of private capital investment in competitiveness, and the relationship between competition and society.

Dr. Porter’s initial training was in aerospace engineering at Princeton University. He then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard’s Department of Economics. His research approach—applying economic theory and competition thinking to complex systemic problems—reflects these multidisciplinary foundations.

His book, Competitive Strategy, is in its 58th printing and has been translated into 17 languages. His second major strategy book, Competitive Advantage, is in its 34th printing. On Competition is a select collection of Porter's writing, plus two new pieces that tie the range of his work together.

With Jeffrey Sachs, Professor Porter has led the research to create the Global Competitiveness Report, an annual ranking of the competitiveness and growth prospects of 75 countries. He served as advisor on competitive strategy to many leading US and international companies, to community organisations, and to numerous foreign nations and groups of neighbouring countries. His work has led to a long-term initiative formed by the heads of state of Central American countries called the Latin American Centre for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development, a permanent institution based in Costa Rica.

Michael Porter has conducted extensive research on economic development in America's distressed inner-city areas and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) a non-profit, private-sector initiative to catalyse inner-city business development across the country.

Professor Porter plays an active role in US economic policy with the Executive Branch, Congress, and international organisations. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness, a private-sector organisation made up of heads of major corporations, unions, and universities, and has provided intellectual leadership for much of the Council's work. With ideas that have touched so many, Michael Porter is one of the most influential economic experts of our time.

Michael E. Porter is available to advise your organisation via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customised keynote speeches. Popular themes and speech topics include:

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition
With its promise to connect our lives in an ecosystem that understands how we live, work and play, the Internet of Things is the newest buzzword, but its implications are not yet entirely understood.

In fact, the Internet of Things falls considerably short of an explanation for the strategic and competitive shifts underway in business as smart, connected products usher in a new era of competition fuelled by information technology (IT), says renowned economist Dr Michael Porter, the foremost authority on strategy and competition.

Until now, a framework for understanding and setting strategy aligned with IT’s transformation didn’t exist. Now, Dr Porter deconstructs this next generation of IT, and navigates how the rapidly transforming nature of products – now made smart by combining hardware with sensors, electronics and software, and connected through the Internet of Things in myriad ways – is restructuring value chains, altering industry structure, broadening industry boundaries, redefining opportunities for competitive advantage and creating new competitive threats.

Every company, especially manufacturers, has an urgent need to rethink nearly everything – from how products are conceived, designed and sourced, to how they are manufactured, operated and serviced.

Dr Michael Porter explores various, compelling case examples of how companies and industries are capturing the value creation opportunity presented by smart, connected products – and how others must also assess every part of their business strategies and consider new models. Dr Porter’s thinking and call to action is transformational – and essential for anyone looking for ideas to start a business, lead a division or run a company.

Strategy and Competitiveness: Businesses, You’re Part of the Problem – And the Solution
The global economy is facing serious challenges – major recession, stalled job growth, rising energy and commodity prices, erosion of public confidence. More than ever, countries and companies alike must learn to compete in an ever-evolving, increasingly volatile world marketplace, and put into place the fundamentals underpinning growth and development.

By mapping out a long-term strategy, says Michael Porter, organisations, nations and cities alike can better ensure future vitality and prosperity. Informed by his proven theories on competitiveness, he discusses the nature of market competition and its impact on strategy, and delves deep into the relationship between market competition and social concerns.

Creating Shared Value: The New Strategy for Competitive Advantage
Even as countries around the world continue to emerge from a bruising recession, businesses are still bearing the brunt of the blame for the economic crisis. Companies themselves are partly to blame, argues Dr Michael Porter, because they remain trapped in a narrow-minded approach to value creation, optimising short-term financial gains instead of addressing society’s bigger and broader problems.

But these challenges can be overcome by working toward creating shared value, in which businesses enhance their competitiveness while also improving the economic and social conditions in the communities where they operate. It is not enough to be a corporate donor, he argues.

Dr Porter explores various and powerful ways companies can benefit society – as well as drive their own growth and profitability. He believes this reimagining of capitalism and its relationship to society will fuel a new wave of innovation and productivity – and perhaps most importantly, help the business world regain legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

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Clients often ask about purchasing books for giveaways and delegate packs. Below you’ll find a selection of products by Michael E. Porter. Click the images to view on Amazon's website. For bulk orders, please speak with your Booking Agent.