Stories
Stories
Mastering the Competition — Michael E. Porter (MBA 1971)
Even while he was growing up, Michael Porter, the School's C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration, knew a thing or two about the world. The son of a career Army officer, he lived in many places in this country and abroad. Sports introduced him to competition. In high school in New Jersey, Porter earned all-state honors in football and baseball. He also taught himself golf well enough to eventually win a place on the 1968 NCAA All-American golf team while an undergraduate at Princeton, where he also earned academic honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering.
"My father's travels provided me with a broadening experience," says Porter, at ease between sips from a can of diet soda, "and athletics offered an outlet for competing while exposing me to the importance of self-discipline and thorough preparation."
These experiences helped set the stage for Porter's sparkling academic career. The author of classics such as Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, and The Competitive Advantage of Nations, he is widely regarded as the world's leading expert on competitive strategy for corporations and countries.
"I'm currently dealing with five projects simultaneously. I carry a part of each one in my bag."
"I like to take on large, complex problems and establish frameworks that help people cut through them without oversimplifying," Porter says.
His bulging briefcase nearby is a reminder of his prodigious capacity for work. "I'm currently dealing with five projects simultaneously," he explains. "I carry a part of each one in my bag, so that I can go back and forth between them."
Porter's schedule outside of research and writing is no less full. During a typically hectic month last spring, he taught in three HBS executive education programs, gave several presentations to alumni, and spent a day each in Nicaragua and Costa Rica leading an effort to create an economic vision for Central America involving the seven heads of state from the region.
"I care about changing both how people think and how they behave," says Porter. "I'm pleased when my work is used by other academicians. But I feel equally satisfied when people tell me my ideas made a difference in their companies or countries."
Joining the HBS faculty in 1973 after earning a Harvard Ph.D. in business economics in just two years, Porter devoted the next decade to developing the seminal ideas that remain the cornerstone of his life as a professor. His marriage in 1985, however, led to some changes in perspective. "My wife, Deborah, expanded my horizons in many ways, but one of the most important was in service to the community -- an outlook that was an integral part of her upbringing," Porter explains. Inspired to a large degree by her work as the founder of a program for disadvantaged Boston youth, Porter created a new model for fostering economic development in inner cities. One result of his research was the establishment two years ago of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to putting Porter's model into practice.
Now the father of two daughters, Ilana, nine, and Sonia, seven, Porter abides by strict rules that reserve time for family activities. "I've eliminated most of my overnight trips," he notes, "and I try to arrive home on weeknights in time for dinner." His involvement in athletics these days is limited to running four to five miles on weekends and watching his daughters' soccer games. "I won't be able to give them any coaching tips, though," Porter laughs, "until they play baseball."
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