Michael Porter

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about

deliberately choosing to be different

Submitted by : Megha Durgan

Kaaraayaarthi Sharma
Saswat Panda
Nityanand Sinha
Rahul Kumar
Early Life

Michael Eugene Porter received a BSE with high honors in aerospace andmechanical
engineeringfromPrinceton Universityin 1969, where he graduated first in his class
and was elected toPhi Beta KappaandTau Beta Pi. He received an MBA with high
distinction in 1971 fromHarvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker
Scholar, and a PhD in business economics fromHarvard Universityin 1973.

At Harvard, Porter took classes inindustrial organizationeconomics, which attempts

to model the effect of competitive forces on industries and their profitability. This
study inspired thePorter five forces analysisframework for analyzing industries
Career

Michael Porter is the author of 18 books and numerous articles

includingCompetitive Strategy,Competitive Advantage,Competitive
Advantage of Nations, andOn Competition.
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.
 Career

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has

towered over the field of competitive strategy. On
Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings
together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark
articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are
new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his
classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape
Strategy," as well as new work on health care,
philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO
leadership.
Works

Competitive Strategy
Porter is engaged in a major new body of work on the theoretical foundations of
competitive positioning and the underpinnings of sustainable competitive
advantage.
This research highlights the distinction between positioning and operational
effectiveness; the fundamental role of differences in company activities in
positioning; and the central importance of tradeoffs in delivering different types of
customer benefit to the sustainability of differences in positioning; the role of fit
among a firm's activities (or activity systems); competitive advantage and
sustainability; and the relationship between strategy, organizations, and incentives.
Honors And Awards

Won the first place 2001 McKinsey Award for the best article inHarvard Business
Reviewfor Strategy and the Internet.
Won the second place 2002 McKinsey Award for the best article inHarvard Business
Reviewfor The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy with Mark R.
Kramer.
Received an Honorary Doctorate in 2003 from Handelshyskolen BI (the BI
Norwegian School of Management) in Oslo.
Won the 2003 Academy of Management Career Achievement Award for
Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Management.
Elected a charter member of the Fellows of the Strategic Management Society in
2005.
Honors And Awards

Received the first Lifetime Achievement Award in Economic Development from

the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2008.
Received an Honorary Doctorate in 2009 from McGill University in Montreal,
Canada.
Received an Honorary Doctorate in 2011 from the Illinois Institute of
Technology in the United States.
Won the first place 2011 McKinsey Award for the best article inHarvard
Business Reviewfor Creating Shared Value with Mark R. Kramer.
Received an Honorary Doctorate in 2015 from Universit Laval in Canada