Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Strategy: Seeking and Securing Competitive A

Strategy: Seeking and Securing Competitive Advantage

Michael E. Porter, Cynthia A. Montgomery
1991
T4 413 pages · about 6h 53m to read Open Librarygoodreads

Edited HBR reader

Summary

The reference has not verified this book in detail; the summary states only what the title, author and subject establish.

Michael Porter and Cynthia Montgomery edited this collection of readings for teaching strategy at Harvard Business School. It assembles articles by different authors on industry analysis, competitive positioning, corporate strategy and the sources of advantage.

The contents include Porter's own work on the five forces and on competitive advantage, material on cost and differentiation positioning, work on corporate strategy and diversification including contributions from the resource-based tradition, and material on competitive dynamics and on the sustainability of advantage. The collection reflects the state of the field around 1990, at a point when the industrial organisation approach that Porter represented and the resource-based view that emphasised firm-specific capabilities were both current.

The reference has not verified the specific selection in this volume, and this entry reflects its established purpose as a teaching reader and the editors' known positions rather than a close reading. Readers wanting Porter's argument directly should read On Competition or Competitive Strategy; readers wanting the resource-based view should go to its primary sources.

Key takeaways 6

  1. Industry structure determines average profitability, and a firm's position within an industry determines its performance relative to that average.
  2. Competitive advantage comes either from lower cost or from differentiation that customers will pay for, and pursuing both usually achieves neither.
  3. The resource-based view holds that firm-specific resources that are valuable, rare and hard to imitate explain sustained advantage.
  4. Corporate strategy creates value only when the parent transfers skills or shares activities across businesses.
  5. Advantage erodes as competitors imitate, so the question of sustainability is about what makes imitation costly.
  6. The field around 1990 held two partly competing explanations of performance, one emphasising industry position and one emphasising firm resources.

Who should read it

Students and instructors wanting a teaching collection on competitive strategy from around 1990, with the caveat that this entry is not verified in detail.

About Michael E. Porter

Bishop William Lawrence University Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School; founder, Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness

Competitive Strategy and the five-forces framework are the primary source for industry analysis, and Competitive Advantage supplied the value-chain vocabulary the field still uses.

Harvard Business School, Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness

Michael E. Porter’s page →Harvard Business School →Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness →

Similar books 6

Chosen by shared topics, the entries that hold them, and the people who recommended both.

Cases in Competitive StrategyCases in Competitive Strategy
T4 Cases in Competitive Strategy
Michael E. Porter · 1983
Open LibraryGoodreads
Competition in Global IndustriesCompetition in Global Industries
T4 Competition in Global Industries
Michael E. Porter · 1986
Open LibraryGoodreads

Edited volume

Competitive AdvantageCompetitive Advantage
T1 Competitive Advantage
Michael E. Porter · 1985
Open LibraryGoodreads

The value chain: how to find where a firm's cost or differentiation advantage lies.

Competitive StrategyCompetitive Strategy
T3 Competitive Strategy
Michael E. Porter · 1980
Open LibraryGoodreads

Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Bill Gurley, Jamie Dimon

On CompetitionOn Competition
T4 On Competition
Michael E. Porter · 1998
Open LibraryGoodreads

Collected HBR articles; expanded edition 2008

Redefining Health CareRedefining Health Care
T4 Redefining Health Care
Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg · 2006
Open LibraryGoodreads

Creating Value-Based Competition on Results

Where it sits in the reference 3

Michael E. Porter
Strategists
Management and Organisational Design
Business themes
Competitive strategy
Business themes

Topics

Business and Management