Customer Reviews

What Is Strategy? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Michael E. Porter is a Harvard Business School professor and a leading authority on competition. He has written several important novels and articles in the field of competition and strategic management.

I see this 1996 Harvard Business Review-article as an reply to all the critics of his frameworks and models (such as Henry Mintzberg and Gary Hamel). In his reply, Michael Porter discusses operational effectiveness in relation with strategic positioning. The author does this through explaining the difference between operational effectiveness and strategy ("It is necessary but not sufficient"), strategic positioning ("Competitive strategy is about being different."), strategic trade-offs ("The essence of strategy is what NOT to do."), strategic fit ("The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well - not just a few - and integrating among them."), and rediscovering strategy ("Although external changes can be the problem, the greater threat to strategy often comes from within.") Michael Porter concludes that both operational effectiveness and strategy are essential, but that the two have different agendas. Managers need to be aware that there is a difference between the famous management tools/fads (TQM, benchmarking, BPR, etc.) and strategy formulation. Just aiming for operational effectiveness often results in lower industry profits - so everyone loses out. The final point that the author makes to his critics is that "strategic continuity does not imply a static view of competition. Strategic continuity, in fact, should make an organization's continual improvement more effective."

I did enjoy this Harvard Business Review-article a great deal since it responds to comments from various critics. It also allows a comparison with other academics and business writers in the field of strategic management. I recommend it to managers and, certainly, all MBA/Business-students. The author uses simple US-English.

Strategy is such simple concept but often overlooked by business decision makers. It doesn't matter if you are a corporate executive or a small business owner, you need to understand what strategy really is in order to make successful choices to guide your business. In this article, Porter makes a distinction between operational effectiveness and strategy, then he goes on to further expand the exercise of strategies. The article is well organized and straight forward. It doesn't take you long to read, and the value of this article is much much more than[$$]. You are doing yourself a favor to read this article. There is nothing to lose.

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

My takeaway from this article is that strategy should be described as a series of many linked activities that are not only aligned but also re-inforce each other so that 1+1=3. A competitor may easily copy some activities but it is harder to successfully copy every activity. Since the success of the execution relies on 1) many activities working in concert, 2) refraining from doing non-strategic activities, the biggest threat to executing the strategy is coming from within the organization as opposed to any external competition.

Well explained. Makes sense. However, I was less impressed by the actual examples given. In fact, I read this article a couple of months ago and I cannot remember a single example.