Competitive Advantage (Hardcover)

Michael E. Porter

ISBN 10: 0684841460 / ISBN 13: 9780684841465

Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998

About this Item

Hardcover. 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. Now an essential part of international business thinking, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. That the phrases 'competitive advantage' and 'sustainable competitive advantage' have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable. Synopsis coming soon. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780684841465

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Competitive Advantage (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684841460
• ISBN 13: 9780684841465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

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. Now an essential part of international business thinking, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. That the phrases 'competitive advantage' and 'sustainable competitive advantage' have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.

About the Author

Michael E. Porter is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. The author of fourteen books and recipient of the Wells Prize in Economics, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.