Michael E. Porter Quotes (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Michael E. Porter: 13 quotes2 likes

Famous Michael E. Porter Quotes

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Source: What is strategy?, 1996, p. 70

“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.”

Michael E. Porter

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 39

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

Michael E. Porter

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 301

“The grandfather of concepts for predicting the probable course of industry evolution is the familiar product life cycle.”

Michael E. Porter

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 157

“Early entry is appropriate when the following general circumstances hold:
- Image and reputation of the firm are important to the buyer, and the firm can develop an enhanced reputation by being a pioneer.
- Early entry can initiate the learning process in a business in which the learning curve is important, experience is difficult to imitate, and it will not be nullified by successive technological generations.
- Customer loyalty will be great, so that benefits will accrue to the firm that sells to the customer first.
- Absolute cost advantages can be gained by early commitment to supplies of raw materials, distribution channels, and so on.”

Michael E. Porter

2008 edition, p. 248
Competitive strategy, 1980

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

Michael E. Porter

Michael Porter, "The CEO as strategist," in: Henry Mintzberg, Bruce W. Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel (eds.). Strategy bites back: It is a lot more, and less, than you ever imagined. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 45

Michael E. Porter Quotes

“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.”

Michael E. Porter

"What is strategy?," 1996
Context: 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 success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few – and integrating among them.”

Michael E. Porter

"What is strategy?," 1996

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

Michael E. Porter

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 3

“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.”

Michael E. Porter

Competitive Advantage, 1985

“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.”

Michael E. Porter

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