Porter, Michael (1947- )

US management theorist and expert on competitive strategy. He joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1973 and was appointed the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor in 2000, the fourth faculty member in the school's history to earn the distinction.

His first book, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors (1980), set out his theory on strategies for competitive advantage. Porter's ‘five forces’, the forces acting to determine the profitability of an industry, are a key concept in business strategy. He applied his ideas to countries in his Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) to explain why some countries are richer than others.

His theory of ‘competitive strategy’ is based on the analysis of a company's competitive position within its environment, using the ‘five forces’ that drive competition in an industry. These forces are: the relative strength of buyers or customers; the relative strength of suppliers; the relative ease with which potential new competitors can enter the market; the potential availability of substitutes; and rivalry between competing firms. Competitive Advantage of Nations emerged from his work at former US president Ronald Reagan's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness in 1985. It examined the competition between nations, states, and regions, and also their sources of economic prosperity, concluding that strong domestic competition was the key to success and that the strongest industries in a location are often surrounded by ‘clusters’ of successful related industries.

Porter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The son of a career Army officer, he served in the US Army Reserve, rising to the rank of captain. He was also a sportsman. Having played all-state high school football and baseball, he played intercollegiate golf while at Princeton University, where he received a BSE in aerospace and mechanical engineering in 1969. He was selected for the 1968 NCAA Golf All-American Team, but went to Harvard Business School instead of starting a career as a professional golfer. As a George F Baker Scholar, he received an MBA in 1971 and then a PhD in Business Economics in 1973, before joining the faculty. As the C Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration he maintained a high profile in the school's executive education programmes.

His other publications include Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (1985). He is also a leading contributor to the Harvard Business Review (publishing ‘Strategy and the Internet’ in the March 2001 edition), and is co-chairman of the Global Competitiveness Report, an annual ranking of the competitiveness and growth prospects of countries. In 1994, he founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a non-profit-making, private-sector initiative. Porter has served as a consultant to many leading corporations, among them Credit Suisse First Boston, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble, and as an adviser to foreign governments.