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On Competition
book

On Competition

by Michael E. Porter
October 2008
Intermediate to advanced
544 pages
16h 45m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from On Competition

CHAPTER 1

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

Michael E. Porter

IN ESSENCE, THE JOB OF THE STRATEGIST is to understand and cope with competition. Often, however, managers define competition too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors. Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces as well: customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. The extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.

As different from one another as industries might appear on the surface, the underlying drivers of profitability are the same. The global ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781422155622