Understanding Michael Porter

The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

By: Joan Magretta

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

A Distillation of The Most Important Business Thinking of Our Time

Michael Porter’s groundbreaking ideas on competition and strategy have unfolded over three decades and are spread across a dauntingly long list of publications. Every manager can name individual pieces of his work - competitive advantage, the value chain, five forces - but no one, not even Porter himself, has put the entire puzzle together to reveal it as an integrated whole. This lucid, concise audiobook does just that. Written with Porter’s full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review, this book provides an engaging summary of Porter’s ideas and an invaluable synthesis of this important body of work, making clear how each of Porter’s powerful concepts relates to the others and, most important, to the practical realities managers face.

Modern thinking about competition and strategy begins with Porter’s frameworks. They are the most widely used in practice by managers around the world. But as Magretta points out, Porter is often misunderstood and his frameworks misapplied. Magretta’s own wide-ranging business experience allows her to identify the most common of these misconceptions - among them, the deeply held but dangerous belief that competition is about being the best. Understand Porter and you will see why competing to be the best sparks an inevitable race to the bottom.

Understanding Michael Porter will enable all leaders throughout any organization to grasp Porter’s seminal ideas about competition and strategy and deploy them to achieve competitive success.

©2011 Joan Magretta (P)2011 Gildan Media Corp

An Excellent Synopsis of Michael Porter

This is a concise distillation of Michael Porter, who changed the academic business world by his insights on competition and business strategy.

The summary is written by Joan Magenta, a Bain Capital alum who worked directly with Porter. It is accurate to the original Porter material. It even captures the evolution of Porter's insights over the years.

Because of the author's own experience in the business world (as opposed to having only academic business experience) the principles are presented so they can be readily understood by business professionals.

Magretta's experience as an editor shows in her writing style. She writes concisely, precisely, and with humor. I didn't expect to laugh while reading a precis of deep academic work. But I did. Bravo.

If you don't have the time to digest years of Porter, this short work will serve you well.

On the other hand, if you studied Porter, but your "Five Forces" summary is getting rusty, this is a great refresher.

Finally, if your MBA came, not from Harvard Business School, but was awarded by the business school of hard knocks, this will give you insight into an important part of what your MBA-burnished colleagues were supposed to have learned about competition and business strategy. You may even find that Magretta imparts more Porter than your business school associates can recall.

A fine read - highly recommended

Understanding Michael Porter covers the core curriculum of Porters thinking on Strategy. The book does a fine job of framing and explaining the key concepts of the Porter approach to Strategy. I particularly liked the framing and use of examples in the first half of the book.

Excellent Synthesis of Strategy Masterworks

Strategy expert and author does a great job modernizing and orchestrating Porters seminal works on strategy.

Great content

The content is excellent. I had a hard time with the narrator. Did not care for his style.

Top of the shelf business book.

This book is amazing. Everything is very clearly laid out, and there is no filler.
The narrator does sounds like Steve Martin at times, but that is easily overlooked - I have certainly heard worse.

Clearer Than The Original

The writing of many great thinkers can be difficult to follow. Their great points are often much clearer in the hands of other writers. Author Joan Magretta demonstrates this with the works of Michael Porter. It seems that most executives are aware of Porter, but few bother to read Porter because it's difficult reading. Magretta's work takes that barrier away.

Everyone directly involved in business strategy needs to know Porter's thinking. "Understanding Michael Porter" is an excellent way to do it.

One of the biggest and most common flaws Porter finds with typical business strategies is that they fall into the trap of thinking that if the company is the best at something, that will make the company successful, and further that there's something unique that the company can do to be the best. In reality, all the competitors are working hard to execute well. Striving to be the best is a zero-sum game that has everyone copying everyone else and that does not lead to profitability. Rule #1 is not to make this mistake.

From there, Porter gets more complicated, describing the various types of strategies that can lead to superior profitability. The key thing is differentiation. Managers must make emotionally difficult decisions to ignore some opportunities so that they can focus on others.

In my consulting work, I apply a simple test to determine whether the strategy avoids the error of aiming just to be the best and embraces differentiation. Write out the strategy in one or a few sentences. Reverse the meaning of the strategy statement. If the result sounds somewhat plausible as a strategy, then you have a real strategy. If the result sounds ridiculous, then you have a ridiculous strategy.

Several reviewers have commented negatively on the performance given here by Erik Synnestvedt. I concur. The reader has an odd and annoying sing-songy drawing out of the end of most sentences, depending on the vowel sounds involved. You can hear it in the sample. At first it doesn't seem so bad, but after a couple of hours of it, it gets increasingly annoying and distracting.

Great book, annoying narrator

Great content, concepts and book but the narrator drives me nuts with his intonations and manner of speaking… 🙄

Great Content with irritating narrator

Great and dense content. I recommend that you review the sample before buying to check whether it’s fits your preferable tone of voice.

Fantastic distillation and explanation!

What made the experience of listening to Understanding Michael Porter the most enjoyable?

Michael Porter is one of the most influential business thinkers of the past 40 years. His thinking on the Five Forces and other aspects of both competitive and business strategy are widely studied and used across the world. That said, Dr. Porter's writing IS academic and he has expanded and revised some of his older thinking. The author of this book is a fellow academic and (dare I say?) protege of Dr. Porter.

She has done a masterful job of making his work more accessible and easier to understand PLUS she's indicated when he has revised his thinking over the years. Invaluable book if you want to apply Dr Porter's analytical templates to your business.

Any additional comments?

The voice artist was clear and easy to understand. I listen to my books at about 1.25 speed and even at the higher speed he was easy to follow.

Essential if you want to assimilate Porter quickly

Overall I found this book well written and interesting. It gives the reader a quick and clear understanding of Porter's theories.