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Michael Porter

Michael E. Porter (born 1947) is an American academic focused on management and economics. He is currently the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor based at Harvard Business School where he leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.

He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1973.

A leading contributor to strategic management theory, Porter's main academic objectives focus on how a firm or a region, can build a competitive advantage and develop competitive strategy. Porter's strategic system consists primarily of:

5 forces analysis
strategic groups (also called strategic sets)
the value chain
the generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus
the market positioning strategies of variety based, needs based, and access based market positions.
Porter's clusters of competence for regional economic development

In 1984, he was one of the co-founders of Monitor Group, a leading global strategy and management consulting firm with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1994, he founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a non-profit organization with a mission of fostering economic development in the impoverished inner city.

References

Porter, M. (1979) "How competitive forces shape strategy", Harvard business Review, March/April 1979.
Porter, M. (1980) Competitive Strategy, Free Press, New York, 1980.
Porter, M. (1987) "From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy", Harvard Business Review, May/June 1987, pp 43-59.
Porter, M. (1996) "What is Strategy", Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec 1996.
Porter, M. (2001) "Strategy and the Internet", Harvard Business Review, March 2001.