Michael Porter
Michael Porter is a prominent figure in the fields of economics and business, particularly known for his contributions to corporate strategy. He is the founder of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, where he has been teaching since 1982. Educated at Princeton University, where he earned a degree in aerospace engineering, and at Harvard, where he obtained an MBA and PhD in business economics, Porter combines a strong academic background with practical insights into competition and strategy.
Porter's influential works include "Competitive Strategy" (1980), which established a framework for companies to gain a competitive edge, and "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" (1990), which challenged the notion that globalization undermines national power. He emphasizes the importance of creating productive and innovative environments to foster wealth creation. Additionally, Porter has contributed to public discourse on political systems, co-authoring "The Politics Industry," which critiques the two-party system in the U.S.
His impact on the business community is significant, with numerous accolades, including the McKinsey Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Beyond academia, Porter has founded several nonprofit organizations aimed at enhancing social impact and has consulted for numerous major corporations around the world.
Michael Porter
Professor, economist, author
- Born: May 23, 1947
- Place of Birth: Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Education: Princeton University; Harvard University
- Significance: Michael Porter is a leading authority on economics and business, particularly in the field of corporate strategy. Porter is the founder of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, part of the Harvard Business School. This program is a way for Porter to house his research and provides a platform for newly appointed CEOs of large corporations to learn corporate strategy.
Background
Michael Porter began his higher education at Princeton University, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering. Porter was first in his class. While at Princeton, Porter was a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship golf team, which led to his interest in competition. This experience inspired him to switch gears and attend Harvard University, where he earned an MBA (from the Harvard Business School) and a PhD in business economics, which he completed in 1971 and 1973, respectively.
Life’s Work
Soon after completing his PhD at Harvard University, Michael Porter released his first book, Competitive Strategy (1980). In this book, Porter analyzed how companies are able to create a competitive long-term advantage in their markets. He assessed the two conflicting schools of thought at the time. The first argument came from his alma mater, the Harvard Business School, which believed that companies needed to adjust to their unique circumstances in order to gain a competitive advantage. The other argument came from the Boston Consulting Group, which believed that corporate strategy could be derived from an understanding of the market and could be applied to universal principles. In this book, Porter created a middle ground between the two approaches and used the individualistic approach of the Harvard Business School while also outlining more generic strategies that corporations could use based on the market for their specific industry. To create this middle ground, Porter used theories of industrial economics and management consulting.
Other Publications
While Porter’s Competitive Strategy received large critical acclaim, it was not until his 1990 work The Competitive Advantage of Nations that Porter received widespread recognition for his work. He came up with the idea and framework for the book when he was serving on President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness, which had the mission of creating a framework for industrial policy in the United States. In this book, Porter analyzes the economics of ten different industrialized nations. At the time, conventional wisdom stated that globalization was destroying the power that nations once had and eroding their global influence. In this book, Porter argued that the opposite was true and that creating national wealth simply involved creating a productive, innovative environment for both companies and workers, as well as creating a support system that could allow that productivity to exist. Porter believed that this support system could manifest in ways such as health care delivery to support societal productivity and create wealth.
The Competitive Advantage of Nations sold hundreds of thousands of copies and launched Porter’s academic career. It also earned him consulting advisory positions with many US-based and international corporations, including Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Royal Dutch Shell, and Taiwan Semiconductor.
Porter and Katherine Gehl collaborated on a Harvard Business School report about the two-party American system. They described it as a duopoly in which the parties compete in ways that benefit themselves. The 2017 report was revised and expanded and published in 2020 as The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy.
Academic Career and Nonprofit Work
Porter has taught at Harvard Business School since 1982 and was appointed the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor in 2000. With this appointment, Porter created the Institute for Strategy and Competiveness within the Harvard Business School. The institute has allowed Porter to teach the ideas he set forth in his books and train newly appointed chief executive officers of major corporations in corporate strategy. In this capacity, Porter was able to make the ideas of both competition and strategy a core part of the MBA curriculum within the Harvard Business School.
As a professor, Porter also founded several nonprofit organizations. These include the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and FSG-Social Impact Advisors. In 2008, he became a principal member of the Trustees of Princeton University.
Impact
Michael Porter’s ideas have been widely cited by business and economics authors, and he is often sought out as a consultant in these fields and in health-care innovation. He has written approximately twenty books and many articles, particularly for the Harvard Business Review. For these articles, Porter has been given the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year on numerous occasions. In 2008, the US Department of Commerce recognized him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Economic Development.
Bibliography
"Biography: Michael Porter." Institute for Strategy and Competiveness. President and Fellows of Harvard University, n.d. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.
"Career Timeline: Michael Porter." Institute for Strategy and Competiveness. President and Fellows of Harvard University, n.d. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.
Magretta, Joan. Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy. Boston: Harvard Business Review, 2012. Print.
"Michael E. Porter." Harvard Business School, www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6532. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
"Michael Porter." Economist. Economist Newspaper, 1 Aug. 2008. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.
"Professor Porter PhD." Economist. Economist Newspaper, 8 Oct. 1994. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.