Most Popular Books by Michael E. Porter

9 chapters in 4 parts on Michael Porter's economic theory of productivity, innovation and unique value, and its application to antitrust law, education and health care, including 5 chapters by Prof. Porter(one co-authored with Prof. Scott Stern) on the theory and antitrust , the chapter on education by retired TRW top scientist Peter Staudhammer and Charles Weller, and chapters on antitrust and on health care by Charles Weller -- Health Care Edition.

A successful firm may deter imitation by performing a system of numerous, related activities well; advantage can be sustained without game-theoretic maneuvers or reliance on a handful of valuable resources. A competitive advantage based on many activities resists imitation more effectively than an advantage that rests on few when the constituent activities are interactive. Interaction, or fit, also redoubles the imitation-deterring effects of imitation costs, limits on managerial capacity, and casual ambiguity. Complementary interactions that deter imitation can arise from technological relationships between activities or from strategic interplay between firms. A Monte Carlo simulation illustrates the main results.

"This document includes data on the performance and composition of the Hawaii economy. It is intended as an initial overview to motivate further discussions based on the full richness of data. The data is based on the Cluster Mapping Project, a multi-year effort to statistically define clusters and analyze regional economics in the United States" -- Page 3.

To further our understanding of creating and sustaining firm competitive advantage, we need to recognize two types of contextuality within firms' activity systems. First, the benefit of activity configurations can be contextual while some activityconfigurations are generically beneficial, othersgain their value only as part of particular strategies. Second, interactions among activities can be contextual. While some interactions between activities are an inherent property of the activities themselves, other interactions are determined contextually by other activity choices made by a firm. We argue that competitive advantage is likely to be more sustainable if it is based on activities that are strategy-specific and that have contextual interactions with other activities.

The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts is a leading center for diabetes care, clinician training, and research. The incidence of diabetes is rising precipitously worldwide, challenging quality of life with its complications and rapidly accelerating health care expenditures for employers and governments. The Joslin's multispecialty, team-based care and patient education programs provide opportunities to examine integrated practice units, early-stage and preventive care, and clinical coordination along the full care cycle. The focus on diabetes also enables discussion of what services need to be included in integrated practice units serving patients with complex, chronic diseases. However, despite its renown, the Joslin's clinical operations lose money, raising the challenge of how to align financial success and clinical success in health care delivery. The case can be used to teach strategy in health care delivery, value creation, outcome measurement, reimbursement, and strategic alliances. Learning Objective: Practical application of integrated care model, including successes achieved and challenges faced.

In this paper, we examine the emergence and the sustainability of abnormal profits among U.S. public corporations between 1981 and 1994. Our results reveal strong asymmetries between high and low performers. Overall, high performance is more stable than low performance. High performers show profits above the average a decade earlier. In contrast, low performers show profits that are slightly above average a decade earlier. Industry and corporate-parent effects influence high performance to a far greater degree than low performance. Low performance is dominated by business-specific effects.

Improving provider incentives and reimbursement must become a central component in health care reform. Reimbursement through bundled payments -- a single payment that covers all the procedures, tests, drugs, devices, and services during inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitative care for a patient's medical condition -- is the only approach that aligns providers, payers, and suppliers in a healthy competition to increase patient value. In this article, we articulate the principles of value-based bundled payments, how such bundles should be constructed, and why we believe this reimbursement method best aligns everyone's interests around value. We describe how recent improvements in measuring outcomes and costs have overcome past barriers to wide-scale adoption of bundled payments. We conclude by describing how bundled payments can transform competition in health care, and their longer-term implications for providers, payers, employers, and patients.

In this paper we examine the importance of year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific effects on the profitability of U.S. public corporations within specific 4-digit SIC categories. Our results indicate that year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific effects account for 2%, 19%, 4%, and 32%, respectively, of the aggregate variance in profitability. We also find that the importance of the effects differs substantially across broad economic sectors. Industry effects accounts for a smaller portion of profit variance in manufacturing but a larger portion in lodging/entertainment, services, wholesale/retail trade, and transportation. Across all sectors we find negative covariance between corporate-parent and industry effects. A detailed analysis suggests that industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific effects are related in complex ways.