On Competition

Beginning of article

Try adding this up. Take Michael Porter, a distinguished teacher at Harvard Business School, a prolific writer, and a constant speaker on corporate strategy. Take 10 of his Harvard Business Review articles published over the last 15 years and add two new ones plus an introduction. Put them all together in a 467-page book. And what do you get? I say, you get taken for $35.95 because Michael Porter's On Competition is a dull, repetitive, academic bore.

I'll admit that I am modestly biased against anthologies and compendiums. Too often, they have simply been thrown together and have not been edited for duplication and temporal changes. Too often, the great man who wrote the articles …