Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide To Competition And Strategy By Joan Magretta

Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy By Joan Magretta List Price: $24.95 Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Ships from and sold by Amazon.com 28 new or used available from $12.05 Average customer review: (1 customer reviews)

Product Description

Competitive advantage. The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter's frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter's name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.

Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter's revolutionary thinking. Written with Porter's full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review, this new book delivers fresh, clear examples to illustrate and update Porter's ideas.

Magretta uses her wide business experience to translate Porter's powerful insights into practice and to correct the most common misconceptions about them—for instance, that competition is about being unique, not being the best; that it is a contest over profits, not a battle between rivals; that strategy is about choosing to make some customers unhappy, not being all things to all customers.

An added feature is an original Q&A with Porter himself, which includes answers to managers' FAQs.

Eminently readable, this book will enable every manager in your organization to grasp Porter's ideas—and swiftly deploy them to drive your company's success.

 

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31946 in Books
• Published on: 2011-12-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joan Magretta has worked with Michael Porter for almost two decades; she is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, a McKinsey Award winner, and author of What Management Is, a top pick of its year by The Economist. She was a Bain partner and strategy editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
The Most Accessible Introduction to Porter. Period.
By Kosha Irulta
I have read two of Porter's books - Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage. And I have also, sort of, understood them - even though I haven't really internalized for implementing them in my company. The reason was that I did not quite get my mind around the concepts in a comprehensive manner as the ideas are in different books and they are not presented as an integrated whole (and, of course, I read them at different times). For the first time, in this book, the concepts are presented in a very accessible manner and connected in a very coherent manner. The books starts (Part 1) with What is Competition - elucidating on the concept of Competition, The Five Forces, and the Value Chain (CA). Part 2 addresses What is Strategy - in which the concepts of Creating Value; Trade-offs; Fit; and Continuity are discussed. The books is wrapped up with A Short List of Implications where in the author summarizes the takeaways and how they can be practiced.

I am in the middle of developing a strategy for my company. These easy to understand frameworks have been extremely useful. In fact, after reading this book, I decided not to hire a consultant who was charging me an exorbitant sum ($4,000/day!) as I think that this book will be more helpful. I highly recommend this book esp if you are trying to get a good grasp of the concepts of Michael Porter. An absolute gem.

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