Understanding Michael Porter

The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

By: Joan Magretta

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Narrator must have had strep throat

The narrator sounded like he had a viral infection in his throat because you could tell his voice box was inflated. I have heard him read other works with clarity, but with book its pretty obvious he is going through some sort of sickness.

Great breakdown and analysis of Michael Porter’s main points

This book was a great breakdown and analysis of Michael Porter’s main points. Their insight and analysis of Porter’s work from a highly qualified third party was both informative and refreshing.

A good recap of Porter’s thinking

I found the case studies and industry references very helpful in bringing into practical context what could otherwise be considered highly theoretical concepts. A useful reference to revisit every so often

Erik Synnestvedt

Why do publishers keep hiring Erik Synnestvedt? His reviews are universally negative so why is he still reading books for Audible? He's ruining excellent books like this. Text-to-speech is getting really good. Audible's competitive advantage is excellent narrators. Bad narrators can easily be replaced with text-to-speech and erode any competitive advantage that Audible has. Please invest in good narrators.

Clear and concise summary of Michael Porter

Very pleased, gave me a better understanding of Porters models,their application and a nuanced understanding of competition.

Great synthesis

A lot more people talk about Porter and his ideas than have his books. Agreed, plowing through all his work takes a lot of time and concentration . With this concise, readable compilation of his work over four decades there is no excuse to no excuse to not read about his enduring framework.

Great content, terrible narrator. Still recommend.

highly recommended despite the pick for narrator. will need to listen to this book over and over to truly absorb the material.

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.