Competitive Strategy : Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Review
Fred Gluck Director, Mc Kinsey & Company, Inc. Competitive Strategy provides managers with the raw material for thinking about how to change the rules of the marketplace in their favor....Mr. Porter has made a substantial contribution to the art of the strategist by spelling out the richness of the alternatives which every manager must consider."


Review
Journal of Business Strategy Any manager who studies and uses the materials in this book should be able to devise more successful strategies.


Book Description
What forces drive competition in an industry? What moves will competitors make? How will one's industry evolve? How do strategic planners respond to competitive actions? How can a firm be best positioned to compete in the long run? Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy is the definitive work on the subject of "competitive strategy," the hottest new concept in American business today. The book addresses major questions of vital concern to managers, and presents a comprehensive set of analytical techniques for understanding a business and the behavior of its competitors. Step-by-step, Porter provides the techniques and tools managers need to successfully conduct an industry and competitor analysis. Just a few examples: The fundamental factors determining the nature of competition in a business. The three generic competitive strategies for coping with industry structure: cost leadership, differentiation, and "focus." How to recognize and act on "market signals" from competitors. Forecasting how the structure of an industry will evolve. The costs, risks, and returns of a "preemptive" strategy. Competing effectively in an emerging industry. Selecting new industries to enter. Beginning with a comprehensive set of tools and techniques for analyzing any industry and any array of competitors, the book moves on to examine competitive strategies for fragmented industries, emerging industries, maturing industries, declining industries and global industries. The final section of the book provides analytical techniques for making the important strategic decisions that confront firms -- vertical integration, major capacity expansion, divestment and entry into new businesses. This book will enable managers to anticipate and prepare for -- rather than simply react to -- sudden competitor moves, new entries into their business, and shifts in industry structure, as well as to take forceful positive action to improve a company's position through tested competitive strategies. Competitive Strategy is destined to become the Bible for Fortune 500 managers, company advisers, and securities analysts.


Book Info
Provides tools for capturing the richness and heterogeneity of industries and companies while providing a disciplined structure for examining them. DLC: Competition.


About the Author
Michael E. Porter, Professor at the Harvard Business School, is the recipient of the 1979 McKinsey Foundation Award for The Best Harvard Business Review Article, and a guest columnist for The Wall Street Journal Professor Porter developed the widely acclaimed MBA course on Industry and Competitive Analysis, lectures widely on competitive strategy and is a consultant to numerous companies in the United States and abroad.


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Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Porter introduces his three generic strategies - lowest cost, differentiation, and focuswhich bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing.


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