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Competitive Advantage, Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (精装)
by Michael E. Porter
| Category:
Competitive strategy, Competition, Strategy, Business |
| Market price: ¥ 398.00
MSL price:
¥ 338.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
An awesome classic, a business must-read from one of the world's leading authorities on competitive strategy and international competitiveness. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 11 items |
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Financial Times, USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
The most influential management book of the past quarter century….A veritable goldmine of analytical concepts and tools to help companies get a much clearer grasp of how they can create and sustain competitive advantage. |
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Philip Kotler (Professor of International Marketing, Northwestern University), USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
Michael Porter has done it again. Having defined the "what" and "why" of competitive strategy in his earlier book, he now defines the "how" in Competitive Advantage. |
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Mike Davis, USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
As an active Business Consultant I'm often appaled at the lack of disregard for the importance of strategy. It's a matter of life and death (at least for your company).
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese proverb
Competitive Advantage is all about creating a successful, sustainable strategy (aka Vision). Technology and globalization culminated in ferocious competition for virtually all industries. To be competitive in today's world, you must understand that all value is derived from the customer. Therefore, you will do well to delve deep into how to create value for the customer. Second, in Porter's landmark trilogy, Competitive Advantage describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its rivals. Additionally he introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does through his groundbreaking concept of the value chain.
Competitive Advantage consists of four parts:
Part I) Principles of Competitive Advantage
Introduces the concept of the value chain, which is a general framework for thinking about the activities involved in any business and assessing their relative costs and role in differentiation. Porter then explains the impact of the value chain on cost advantage, differentiation, technology and competitors.
Part II) Competitive Scope within an Industry
Discusses industry segmentation and substitution.
Part III) Corporate Strategy and Competitive Advantage
Explains the interrelationships among business units and their impact on horizontal strategy, achievement of interrelationships, and complementary products.
Part IV) Implications for Offensive and Defensive Competitive
Strategy. Reviews industry scenarios under uncertainty, defensive
strategy, and attacks on industry leaders.
In summary, Competitive Advantage is a must read for any Aspiring Entrepreneur. To lead your company into the future you must create and capture value. Reading this book will help you better understand the value creation process and how value is what buyers are willing to pay for. Ultimately, the difference between value and the cost of delivering value is profit. |
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Peter Leerskov, Denmark
<2006-12-22 00:00>
Michael Porter is the founding father for strategies in a competitive context. This pioneering book represents some of his best thoughts on business and corporate strategy.
Chapter 1 is a summary of his first landmark book - Competitive Strategy. So if you just want to buy one of his bestsellers, then buy Competitive Advantage.
The book's most important contribution is the concept of the Value Chain. Today, you won't find an MBA who doesn't know this idea. This book gives you all the details on the value chain. And it even tells you exactly how the value chain is translated into his two generic strategies: Cost Leadership and Differentiation. Most strategy books devote a separate chapter to this idea. If you want to get a more than a superficial understanding of the value chain, you simply have to read Porter's book.
This book also gets to the core of how synergies are created and when diversification might work. Curiously, Porter chooses the term interrelationships for synergies (you know, a term for a nice idea that rarely occurred in practice...).
Being a business development manager, I have strategic thinking as part of my key areas. This book is still a reference guide for me. Obviously though, Porter's views cannot stand-alone.
If you're looking for critical views on Porter's ideas, then consider buying Hamel & Prahalad's Competing for the Future (1994) or Kim & Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy (2005).
Beware: You have to read Porter's Harvard Business review article "What is Strategy" from 1996, if you want his own response to the critics.
Warning: You cannot work seriously with strategy without having understood Michael Porter's core concepts. And the superficial introduction by most - even advanced - strategy books won't make you competent enough to apply his ideas skillfully. Let me give you two examples:
Cost Structure:
Most MBAs have learned about the value chain and cost structure analysis. But in real life I've seen very few who combine these two concepts proficiently. The real beauty in benchmarking cost structures is when you skillfully apply it to the value chain. This book tells you exactly how to do this. In practice, I've seen this approach applied very few times (except advanced strategy consultants). It may be because people often use Porter's concepts too casually...
Cost Drivers:
Most strategy books are on drivers of differentiation - the preferred strategy choice by management gurus. And Porter does indeed help you on this issue. More importantly, this book is one of the few to tell you about the cost drivers. How many books have you read on Cost Leadership? Porter elaborates on 10 cost drivers, such as economies of scale, learning, linkages, synergies, pattern of capacity utilization, integration, timing, policies, and location.
Strategy is about being different. Start out personally by reading the real thing... it's a bargain. |
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A reader, USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
Porter has highlighted many important considerations for those who are pursuing possible strategies to employ for their organization. In order to pursue generic strategies like cost, differentiation & quick response (recent), you would have to gear your value chain towards these options. Porter has shown how this may be done in his book which is a great reference for strategic formulation. However, in order to have the optimum strategy(s) for an organization, you would have to consider the human side. Porter's book tends to sway towards the organizational design dimension. I recommend Miller & Dess's Strategic Management (McGraw-Hill Series in Management) for a complete overview of strategic management. Also look out for Warren Bennis's Organizing Genius for an insight into great teams. |
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Elijah Chingosho, Kenya
<2006-12-22 00:00>
The book Competitive Advantage describes how a firm can gain an advantage over its rivals. Michael Porter introduced the concept of the "value chain" that breaks down a company into "activities" or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Such discrete activities include order processing, producing products or services, training people, advertising or transporting goods. The value chain concept allows firms to isolate the underlying source of buyer value that will enable a firm to charge a premium price and explains the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another.
Competitive advantage is the key to a company's performance in competitive markets. This is very important in today's global markets when firms face global competition. The book explains how a firm can create and sustain a competitive advantage. It discusses the need for firms to effectively translate their broad competitive strategies into specific action steps required to gain competitive advantage. In particular, the book bridges the gap that many firms have between strategy formulation and implementation and treats the two subjects together.
Porter describes how a firm can put the three generic competitive strategies of cost leadership, differentiation and focus into practice. It highlights, for example, how a firm can differentiate itself from its rivals or how a firm can gain a cost advantage.
The book highlights the need for all the functions of an organization to play their role in creating competitive advantage. Production, marketing, finance, human resources and others all play essential roles for a firm in a combined and integrated way.
The book is critical reading for managers who play a part in a firm's strategy (that means all managers). Students studying strategic management will find the book very informative and easy to follow.
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Gerard Kroese, The Netherlands
<2006-12-22 00:00>
Michael Porter is a Harvard Business School professor and a leading authority on competition and strategy. This book builds on his initial 1980-book Competitive Strategy, which focuses on the industries surrounding businesses (summary of Competitive Strategy is Chapter 1!). In this book, Competitive Advantage, Porter focuses on the business itself. The book is based on the activity-based theory of the firm. Activities are what generate cost and create value for buyers/customers, and are the basic units for competitive advantage.
Competitive Advantage consists of four parts - Principles of Competitive Advantage, Competitive Scope within an Industry, Corporate Strategy and Competitive Advantage, and Implications for Offensive and Defensive Competitive Strategy. Part I introduces the concept of the value, which is a general framework for thinking about the activities involved in any business and assessing their relative costs and role in differentiation. Then Porter explains the impact of the value chain on cost advantage, differentiation, technology and competitors. Part II discusses industry segmentation and substitution. Part III explains the interrelationships among business units and their impact on horizontal strategy, achievement of interrelationships, and complementary products. Part IV discusses industry scenarios under uncertainty, defensive strategy, and attacks on industry leaders.
Although some parts of the book are somewhat outdated, I would say that many modern management books are based on or around this book. This book provides through the use of the value chain a very useful introduction into activities within businesses. I recommend readers to complement this book with Michael Porter's 1996-Harvard Business Review-article What is Strategy? Highly recommended to anyone interested in management and business activities. |
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Franco Arda, UK
<2006-12-22 00:00>
While Competitive Strategy covered the environment of the company, Competitive Advantage explores different aspects of the individual company. One could say that his first book was macro-economics strategy, and this one is micro-economics strategy. If you believe like me, that a company has to concentrate on sustainable competitive advantage no matter what the environment, than that's the book for you. |
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Naomi, USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
Among other concepts, this is the work that introduced the notion of "value chain" - a concept that helped launch a thousand reengineering initiatives, some of which actually created value! Certainly more recent models associated with business networks and ecosystem metaphors have significantly progressed beyond Porter's basic value chain concept - nevertheless, the original is worth thoroughly understanding. |
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An American reader, USA
<2006-12-22 00:00>
I just finished a competitive strategy class in my MBA program and this book was referred to often. The most helpful section is the one that breaks down a company's activities and helps create a "value chain" to figure out how and where an organization creates value. Once this is done, Porter delineates how competitive advantages might be created based on tinkering with value chain activities. The only thing, I felt, was not covered in the book was the 'core competence' concept which is also derived from the value chain but ignored in this particular publication. Nevertheless, this is a 'must have' for all potential strategy consultants. |
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 11 items |
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