Michael Porter Quotes

The essence of formulating strategy is relating a company to its environment.

Quasi-integration is to use debt or equity investments and other means to create alliances between vertically related firms without full ownership.

Low cost relative to competitors becomes the theme running through the entire strategy, though quality, service and other areas cannot be ignored.

The grandfather of concepts for predicting the probable course of industry evolution is the familiar .

The essential complement to the path-breaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter’s Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter’s groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into “activities,” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

The firm achieving focus may also potentially earn above-average returns for its industry. Its focus means that the firm either has a low cost position with its strategic target, high differentiation, or both.

The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few – and integrating among them.

If people in the organization don't understand how a company is supposed to be different, how it creates value compared to its rivals, then how can they possibly make all of the myriad choices they have to make? Every salesman has to know the strategy — otherwise, he won't know who to call on. Every engineer has to understand it, or she won't know what to build.

There's a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different. Operational effectiveness is about things that you really shouldn't have to make choices on; it's about what's good for everybody and about what every business should be doing.

The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.

Early entry is appropriate when the following general circumstances hold: