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The essential complement to the pathbreaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porters Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. With over 30 printings in English and translated into thirteen languages, this second volume in Porters landmark trilogy describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its The essential complement to the pathbreaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porters Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. With over 30 printings in English and translated into thirteen languages, this second volume in Porters landmark trilogy describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its rivals. Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porters groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into activities, or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Now an essential part of international business thinking, Competitive Advantage takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a companys relative cost position. Porters value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. Competitive Advantage also provides for the first time the tools to strategically segment an industry and rigorously assess the competitive logic of diversification. That the phrases competitive advantage and sustainable competitive advantage have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porters ideas. Competitive Advantage has guided countlesscompanies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porters work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.

The essential complement to the pathbreaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porters Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. With over 30 printings in English and translated into thirteen languages, this second volume in Porters landmark trilogy describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its The essential complement to the pathbreaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porters Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. With over 30 printings in English and translated into thirteen languages, this second volume in Porters landmark trilogy describes how a firm...  Read More