Career
Michael Porter is the author of 18 books and numerous articles including Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Competitive Advantage of Nations, and On Competition. A six-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, Professor Porter is the most cited author in business and economics.
Michael Porter’s core field is competition and company strategy. He is generally recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, and his ideas are taught in virtually every business school in the world. His work has also re-defined thinking about competitiveness, economic development, economically distressed urban communities, environmental policy, and the role of corporations in society.
Recently, Porter has devoted considerable attention to understanding and addressing the pressing problems in health care delivery in the United States and other countries. His book, Redefining Health Care (written with Elizabeth Teisberg), develops a new strategic framework for transforming the value delivered by the health care system, with implications for providers, health plans, employers, and government, among other actors. The book received the James A. Hamilton award of the American College of Healthcare Executives in 2007 for book of the year. His New England Journal of Medicine research article, “A Strategy for Health Care Reform—Toward a Value-Based System” (June 2009), lays out a health reform strategy for the U.S. His work on health care is being extended to address the problems of health care delivery in developing countries, in collaboration with Dr. Jim Yong Kim and the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.
In addition to his research, writing, and teaching, Porter serves as an advisor to business, government, and the social sector. He has served as strategy advisor to numerous leading U.S. and international companies, including Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Royal Dutch Shell, and Taiwan Semiconductor. Professor Porter serves on two public boards of directors, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Parametric Technology Corporation. Professor Porter also plays an active role in U.S. economic policy with the Executive Branch and Congress, and has led national economic strategy programs in numerous countries. He is currently working with the Presidents of Rwanda and South Korea.
Michael Porter has founded three major non-profit organizations: Initiative for a Competitive Inner City - ICIC in 1994, which addresses economic development in distressed urban communities; the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which creates rigorous tools for measuring foundation effectiveness; and FSG-Social Impact Advisors, a leading non-profit strategy firm serving NGOs, corporations, and foundations in the area of creating social value. He also currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University.
In 2000, Michael Porter was appointed a Harvard University Professor, the highest professional recognition that can be awarded to a Harvard faculty member.
Michael Porter is one of the founders of The Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm that came under scrutiny in 2011 for its past contracts with the Muammar Gaddafi-led regime in Libya and alleged failure to register its activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and since has been merged with Deloitte. He is a Senior Partner and Academic Director with Deloitte.
In 2009, he was awarded an honorary degree from McGill University.
His main academic objectives focus on how a firm or a region can build a competitive advantage and develop competitive strategy. He is also a Fellow Member of the Strategic Management Society. One of his most significant contributions is the five forces. Porter's strategic system consists primarily of:
- Competitive advantage
- Porter five forces analysis
- strategic groups (also called strategic sets)
- the value chain
- the generic strategies of cost leadership, product differentiation, and focus
- the market positioning strategies of variety based, needs based, and access based market positions
- global strategy
- Porter's clusters of competence for regional economic development
- Diamond model
- Porter's four corners model
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