What Is Strategy? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

Blueprint for how to out-perform competitors over time. A must-read. I have applied this thinking several times with rich results.

In "What is Strategy", Michael Porter produced an excellent article explaining what strategy is and what it is not. Anyone wishing to understand strategy cannot afford to miss reading this article.

Porter makes a clear distinction between operational effectiveness and strategic positioning. Operational effectiveness can be achieved by adopting industry best practices enabling a company to perform better than its competitors. Some practices that are often used to achieve operational effectiveness include Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, benchmarking, outsourcing, partnering and change management, which enable a firm either to reduce costs and/or improve value. As Porter explains, industry best practices can be adopted by all competitors and no one company can have distinctive competitive advantage from others.

With strategic positioning, on the other hand, firms attempt to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and hence sustainable profitability by performing different activities from rivals or performing similar activities in different ways.

The author explains that both operational effectiveness and strategy are critical to superior performance but they work in different ways.

The article is well organized and easy to follow. The author uses numerous examples and mini cases to reinforce his point. The author has done an excellent job of answering some of his critics (including Mintzberg) of his earlier works. I recommend that students of strategic management read this article thoroughly as it lays an excellent foundation for understanding the strategic planning process and concepts.

Don't buy the audio version from audible.com .

Their programming skills are terrible. I could not download some of the books I bought, could not burn into cd the ones I could download, and forget about making it work with an mp3 player, unless you're lucky.

I know about 5 people who bought stuff from there and only one had the luck of downloading a working file and burning it successfully to a cd.

The quality of the narrations is awful, at least in the books I managed to hear (only on windows media player, nothing else worked). If you're used to books on cd or tape, you're up for a big disappointment buying from audible.

On top of all that, they have the worst customer service I have ever witnessed. The site was not working right when I tried to purchase there for the first time. I sent them a message with no answer.

In a second attempt, I bought the stuff and some files never downloaded (which means they just stole my money and I don't know what I can do since I don't live in USA). I sent another message with no answer again.

Then their weird program, which turns Windows Media Player automatically on instead of working alone, showed no compatibility to Itunes and no possibility of burning cds or dreaming about hearing books on Ipod. I sent them a third message and nothing. A fourth and guess what? Nothing again.

So I am at least trying to warn other people here to avoid being caught by such scheme. I hope Amazon gets rid of audible as soon as possible. I always got great service from Amazon and the affiliated bookstores, or even other stores selling electronics, health products and others, but audible is just the worst company I ever wasted my money with. Too bad we cannot give notes to them like with the affiliated booksellers.

Sorry by the poor text, I am just mad with them.

I am very disappointed after paying $7.00 and getting a PowerPoint presentation on their thoughts! Where does it explain their reasoning and justification on each point? Don't waste your money. Shame on Amazon for not explaining the product thoroughly.

This paper is one of the benchmarks in strategy and management thinking. Essential reading for managers at all levels.

It is, however, available on the internet in PDF format. Search Google.