Understanding Michael Porter Quotes

“Competing to be the best feeds on imitation. Competing to be unique thrives on innovation.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Insight into customers’ needs is important, but it’s not enough. The essence of strategy and competitive advantage lies in the activities, in choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities from those of rivals. Each of the companies we’ve just described has done just that, tailoring their value chains to their value propositions.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“The first test of a strategy is whether your value proposition is different from your rivals. If you are trying to serve the same customers and meet the same needs and sell at the same relative price, then by Porter’s definition, you don’t have a strategy.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“A common mistake in strategy is to choose the same core competences as everyone else in your industry.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Porter defines the value proposition as the answer to three fundamental questions (see figure 4-1): Which customers are you going to serve? Which needs are you going to meet? What relative price will provide acceptable value for customers and acceptable profitability for the company?”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Instead of competing to be the best, companies can—and should—compete to be unique. This concept is all about value.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“In business, multiple winners can thrive and coexist. Competition focuses more on meeting customers needs than on demolishing rivals. Just look around. Because there are so many needs to serve, there are many ways to win.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Memorizing the five forces won’t make you a better business thinker; it will only help you to sound like one. It matters that you grasp the deeper point: there are a limited number of structural forces at work in every industry that systematically impact profitability in a predictable direction.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“The key to competitive success—for businesses and nonprofits alike—lies in an organization’s ability to create unique value. Porter’s prescription: aim to be unique, not best. Creating value, not beating rivals, is at the heart of competition.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“If rivalry is intense, companies compete away the value they create, passing it on”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Entry barriers protect an industry from newcomers who would add new capacity.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Substitutes—products or services that meet the same basic need as the industry’s product in a different way—put a cap on industry profitability.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Powerful buyers will force prices down or demand more value in the product, thus capturing more of the value for themselves.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“The five forces framework explains the industry’s average prices and costs, and therefore the average industry profitability you are trying to beat.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Strategic competition means choosing a path different from that of others.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“If rivals all pursue the “one best way” to compete, they will find themselves on a collision course.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“In the vast majority of businesses, there is simply no such thing as “the best.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Strategy explains how an organization, faced with competition, will achieve superior performance. The definition is deceptively simple.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Blue Ocean Strategy,”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“A strategic positioning, especially when it has a high degree of focus, is sometimes seen as carving out a “niche.” The implication of that word is that the market opportunity is small. Although this may sometimes be the case, even focused competitors can be very large. In the case of Southwest, what initially looked like a narrow niche has revolutionized the airline industry.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“The real point of competition is not to beat your rivals. It’s not about winning a sale. The point is to earn profits.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Strategy explains how an organization, faced with competition, will achieve superior performance.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“Only by competing to be unique can an organization achieve sustained, superior performance.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“The essence of strategy,” Porter often says, “is choosing what not to do.”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

“disruptive technology will invalidate the assets of the current generation of industry leaders. Digital”
― Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy