Professor Porter is a leading authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1973.

Professor Porter's ideas on strategy have now become the foundation for the required strategy course at the Harvard Business School, and is taught in virtually every business school in the world. Professor Porter currently leads Harvard's programs for chief executive officers of billion dollar and larger corporations and created a University-wide course on the microeconomics of economic development that is also taught simultaneously, using Internet-delivered material, in 17 other universities. Professor Porter also speaks widely on competitive strategy and international competitiveness to business and government audiences throughout the world. In 2001, Harvard Business School and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, led by Professor Porter, to further his work.

Professor Porter is the author of 17 books and over 100 articles. His book, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, published in 1980, is in its 58th printing and has been translated into seventeen languages. His second major strategy book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, was published in 1985 and is in its 34th printing. His book On Competition (1998) includes eleven articles from the Harvard Business Review as well as two entirely new articles: 'Clusters and Competition' and 'Competing Across Locations'. His Harvard Business Review article 'What is Strategy?' is the foundation for a third major strategy book due to be completed early next year. His article 'Strategy and the Internet' (2001) won for Professor Porter an unprecedented third first-place McKinsey Award as the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, and his fourth McKinsey Award

Professor Porter has also worked on the relationship between competitiveness and the natural environment. His Scientific American essay 'America's Green Strategy', which showed that competitiveness and environmental improvement could be complementary, triggered a body of literature and new policy thinking, including 'Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship' (1995) and 'National Environmental Performance Measurement and Determinants' (2002).

Professor Porter has served as an advisor on competitive strategy to numerous leading U.S. and international companies, among them DuPont, Entel, Edward Jones, Navistar, Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Scotts Company, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He serves on the boards of directors of Parametric Technology Corporation, Thermo Electron Corporation, and Inforte Corporation and on several advisory boards of emerging companies.

Professor Porter is also a counselor to government. He plays an active role in U.S. economic policy with the Executive Branch, Congress, and international organizations. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness, a private-sector organization made up of chief executive officers of major corporations, unions, and universities, and has provided intellectual leadership for much of the Council's work.

Professor Porter has also served as an advisor to numerous foreign nations and groups of neighboring countries. He has led major studies of the economy for the governments of such countries as India, New Zealand, Canada, and Portugal, and advised national leaders in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand, among others. His ideas have inspired national competitiveness initiatives and programs in more than a dozen other countries including Ireland, Finland, and Norway and subnational regions such as Catalonia, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. His thinking about economic development for groups of neighboring countries has led to a long-term initiative with the heads of state of the Central American countries to develop and implement an economic strategy for that region, including the formation of the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development (CLACDS), a permanent institution based in Costa Rica.

Professor Porter has also assisted many state and local governments in enhancing competitiveness. His work with the Basque Country has helped transform that region's economy to become the most prosperous region in Spain. In his home state of Massachusetts, Professor Porter's pro bono work led to a new economic strategy, beginning with the report The Competitive Advantage of Massachusetts (1991). This effort resulted in much new legislation, numerous state initiatives, and the creation of Governor William F. Weld's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, which Professor Porter chaired. Professor Porter has also served as an advisor to the state of Connecticut since the mid-1990s. He helped create an economic plan for the state and helped author the 1998 and 1999 Cluster Bills which were passed unanimously by the Connecticut legislature, and led to a series of other state initiatives. Recently, he has assisted Governors on economic policy in states such as Mississippi and New Jersey.

The awards and honors won by Professor Porter include Harvard's David A. Wells Prize in Economics for his research in industrial organization and five McKinsey Awards for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year. He received the Graham and Dodd Award of the Financial Analysts Federation in 1980. His book Competitive Advantage won the George R. Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management in 1985 as the outstanding contribution to management thought. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 1988 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1991. In 1991, he received the Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for outstanding contribution to the field of marketing and strategy given by the American Marketing Association. Professor Porter was honored by the Massachusetts State Legislature for his work on Massachusetts competitiveness in 1991. In 1993, Professor Porter was named the Richard D. Irwin Outstanding Educator in Business Policy and Strategy by the Academy of Management. He was the 1997 recipient of the Adam Smith Award of the National Association of Business Economists, given in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the business economics profession. A Fellow of the International Academy of Management since 1985, he received that group's first-ever Distinguished Award for Contribution to the Field of Management in 1998. In 2001, the Porter Prize was established in Japan to recognize that nation's leading companies in strategy. Professor Porter was honored by the MBA Class of 2001 at Harvard Business School for his extraordinary efforts as an outstanding faculty member. He has been conferred honorary doctorates by the Stockholm School of Economics; Erasmus University, the Netherlands; HEC (Hautes Ecoles Commerciales), France; Universidada Tecnica de Lisboa, Portugal; Adolfo Ibanez University, Chile; INCAE, Central America; Johnson and Wales University; and Mt. Ida College. His national honors include the Creu de St. Jordi (Cross of St. George) from Catalonia (Spain) and the Jose Dolores Estrada Order of Merit (the highest civilian honor awarded by the Government of Nicaragua).

“Porter’s mission is to bring about an intellectual revolution: to infuse management with the rigour of economics; to elaborate upon economics with examples taken from real life; and, thus, to create a discipline that will enlighten academics and business practitioners alike.”

——The Economist

“Michael Porter…is widely accepted as the world’s most influential thinker on business strategy… Economics undergraduates, MBA students and business school lectures all follow his work avidly, while managers search his books for clues on how to gain competitive advantage.”

——People Management

“Porter is almost single-handedly laying to rest one of the most enduring tenets of international economics: the principle of comparative advantage, one that he is using to teach companies, cities, regions, and nations —— and, most recently, groups of nations acting in concert —— how to compete on the world stage. Porter travels the globe to advise nonprofit institutions, corporate chieftains, and heads of state.”

——WorldBusiness

“Competitive Strategy provides managers with the raw material for thinking about how to change the rules of the marketplace in their favor… Mr. Porter has
made a substantial contribution to the are of the strategist by spelling out the richness of the alternatives which every manager must consider.”

----Fred Cluck, Director, Mckinsey & Company, Inc.

“Michael Porter has a very clear view of the strategic process. He has helped us clarify what kind of values we want to provide our customers, and how our organization can create and sustain a competitive advantage in the markets we serve. ”

----John A. Young

President and Chief Executive Officer Hewlett—Packard Company
“Competitive Advantage takes up where Competitive Strategy ends. It goes beyond competitive analysis to show exactly how a competitive strategy can be selected and implemented. Once again, I am impressed with Porter’s depth of thought. His value-chain concept has been particularly useful to us in analyzing sources of competitive advantage.

---Victor Millar

Managing Partner-Practice Arthur Andersen & Co.
“Michael Porter again shows the power of scholarly thinking for industry and business. I recommend Competitive Advantage to business leaders because it gives them strategic but practical solutions to the major issues they confront.”

---Dr. Koji Kobayashi