Competitive Strategy
by Michael E. Porter · first published 1980
50% recommend45% neutral5% critical
Why HN recommends it
Widely cited as the foundational text on business strategy, valued for frameworks like the five forces and its account of how supplier and buyer power shape competition; suits managers and founders.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
ISBN: 9780029253601
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Michael Porter's "Competitive Strategy" is oddly missing from the list, as it's one of the most influential corporate strategy books out there... if you like the spirit of that list, you should definitely add that one. (Porter's "5 forces"…
on “Ask HN: How can a non-technical co-founder add value?” ↗> Are there good startup-oriented books on go-to-market strategy, distribution channels and business models? - Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter. (But just reading the HBR On Strategy book is probably good enough to get you started.) - Positioning by Trout & Ries - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas If you…
on “Get the Strategy Right and the Execution Is Easy” ↗Is it possible? Yes. Is it easy? No. How do you do it? If I had a magic formula for that, I'd be rich. But... There is a large body of work "out there" on competitive strategy, differentiation, positioning, market segmentation, etc. I hate to say "go off and read this list of 15 books" but I don't think I can do justice to this topic in a HN comment. So, I will, indeed, just…
on “Ask HN: How to enter a highly competitive market?” ↗People really should read Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy: http://astore.amazon.com/hypernumbersc-20/detail/0684841487 He points out that pricing power in a supplier relationship is held by whichever side would find it easier to integrate into the other ones…
on “The Unwelcome Return of Platform Dependencies” ↗…on understanding the patterns evident in the mechanics of doing business, (startups and mature corps alike). To that end, I strongly recommend Michael Porter, who literally wrote the book on modern "Competitive Strategy". There is no other single source of strategic theory that is better than this. Anybody that has taken a b-school class on strategy worth their tuition will recall concepts like Porter's 5-forces. Other…
on “Ask HN: Dev promoted to more strategic role in startup. What literature?” ↗For a contrarian argument, it is worth considering the advice of Michael Porter in his seminal study "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors" (published in 1980): > Some argue that firms should not choose competitive positions at all but concentrate on staying flexible, incorporating new…
on “You shouldn't join Y Combinator” ↗Michael Porter's books on marketing (esp. "Competitive Strategy") are well-regarded.
on “Ask HN: How to learn marketing and sales as a solo entrepreneur?” ↗…academic and not exactly what you'd call "page turners". This book is a fairly solid overview of the key elements of Porter's approach, and a good read before diving into the meat of Porter's works. 2. Competitive Strategy - Michael Porter. http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Indust... 3. Competitive Advantage - Michael Porter. http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Advantage-Creating-Sustain... 4. On Competition…
on “Ask HN: Dev promoted to more strategic role in startup. What literature?” ↗…most important, fundamental skills for a senior level manager is understanding finance. I recommend B. Knight, "Financial Intelligence" as a primer. My favorite book on business strategy is M. Porter "Competitive Strategy", however, this book and all other business strategy books should be taken with a large grain of salt. They often suffer from survivorship bias, being applicable only to certain industries and times,…
on “Ask HN: Dev promoted to more strategic role in startup. What literature?” ↗If you find this article interesting, Coursera's "Competitive Strategy" [1] is a pretty good introduction on the topic of game theory and how it can be used as a decision-making framework for business, I've found. As a case study, I recommend watching this episode of "Golden…
on “What is the Nash Equilibrium and why does it matter?” ↗…sales/marketing and management, there are some core books that are must reads if you want to save 30 years of trial and error. 1. E-myth Revisited (absolute must read for small to midsize business owners) 2. Competitive Strategy 3. Discipline of Market Leaders 4. Good to Great 5. Built to Last
on “Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools” ↗> one of the most profound insights in Thiel's excellent book, Zero to One. Which was an insight in Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). And before that, if you squint, in Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1980) and Competitive Advantage (Porter, 1980). And the B-school theorists basically got their ideas by peeking over the fence of the Economics dept at how monopolies are formed and abuse their…
on “Welcome Peter” ↗…just "winging it" so much. The book Outhink The Competition[1] really inspired me to start down this path. There's some good stuff in there, and that led to me finally picking up my copy of Porter's Competitive Strategy[2] and digging in. I take this seriously enough now, that I wrote a quick and dirty internal app just for managing competitive intelligence and keeping track of documents and links related to competitive…
on “What Startups Can Learn From Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War” ↗In some sense this is very true. Michael Porter (Harvard prof, wrote Competitive Strategy), thinks that basically everyone in an advanced economy has to constantly increase their skills, but as a result, everyone produces more for less money, and the living standards go up collectively. Is…
on “Launch HN: Modern Labor (YC W19) – Paying People to Learn to Code” ↗…competing purely on costs? Can you beat your competitors on costs? How long can you sustain that? (i.e. as your costs rise can you stay competitive) The typical books here are: http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Indust... ...about competing in markets, and... http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Uncontested-Compet... ...on creating new markets. (At this point I've only read the latter. The…
on “Ask HN: Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition?” ↗