Top 50 Michael Porter Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Business Quotes, Strategy Quotes, Choices Quotes

2. “Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not a matter of being better at what you do – it’s a matter of being different at what you do.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Competition Quotes

3. “Strategy is choice. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Strategy Quotes

4. “Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Competition Quotes

5. “Strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Strategy Quotes

6. “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.”

— Michael Porter

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Competition Quotes

7. “You can’t be all things to all people.”

— Michael Porter

8. “Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.”

— Michael Porter

9. “If a strategy meets a goal: It’s working. If a strategy meets a target: It’s a success.”

— Michael Porter

10. “Operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential to superior performance.”

— Michael Porter

11. “Without a goal analytics is aimless and worthless.”

— Michael Porter

12. “A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.”

— Michael Porter

13. “The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.”

— Michael Porter

14. “The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy.”

— Michael Porter

15. “Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.”

— Michael Porter

16. “If all you’re trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be very successful.”

— Michael Porter

17. “Change brings opportunities. On the other hand, change can be confusing.”

— Michael Porter

18. “The thing is, continuity of strategic direction and continuous improvement in how you do things are absolutely consistent with each other. In fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.”

— Michael Porter

19. “The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.”

— Michael Porter

20. “There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness.”

— Michael Porter

21. “If your goal is anything but profitability – if it’s to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader – you’ll hit problems.”

— Michael Porter

22. “A target should go with every goal. A target is the value that defines success.”

— Michael Porter

23. “Finally, strategy must have continuity. It can’t be constantly reinvented.”

— Michael Porter

24. “Ultimately, health care fails the most basic test. It’s not organized around the needs of the patient.”

— Michael Porter

25. “Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities.”

— Michael Porter

26. “The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change.”

— Michael Porter

27. “Good leaders need a positive agenda, not just an agenda of dealing with crisis.”

— Michael Porter

28. “The chief strategist of an organization has to be the leader – the CEO.”

— Michael Porter

29. “Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.”

— Michael Porter

30. “Health care historically has been a very siloed field that’s organized around medical specialties – urology, cardiac surgery, and so forth – and around the supply of these specialty services. The patient is the ping-pong ball that moves from service to service.”

— Michael Porter

31. “Approaches to differentiating can take many forms: design or brand image, technology, features, customer service, dealer network, or other dimensions.”

— Michael Porter

32. “Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the ‘wrong’ scenario occurs.”

— Michael Porter

33. “The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulation. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious. P. 26.”

— Michael Porter

34. “The ability to change constantly and effectively is made easier by high-level continuity.”

— Michael Porter

35. “General management is more than the stewardship of individual functions. Its core is strategy: defining and communicating the company’s unique position, making trade-offs, and forging fit among activities.”

— Michael Porter

36. “Efforts to preserve all industries will lower the national standard of living.”

— Michael Porter

37. “Understanding industry structure is also essential to effective strategic positioning P. 26.”

— Michael Porter

38. “Technology has given us this wonderful opportunity to have low energy costs. We have to seize that, rather than keep debating and discussing and fighting over it.”

— Michael Porter

39. “Cash Cows: Businesses with high relative share in low-growth markets will produce healthy cash flow, which can be used to fund other, developing businesses.”

— Michael Porter

40. “Companies operating in urban communities have a tremendous ripple effect.”

— Michael Porter

41. “In the vast majority of businesses, there is simply no such thing as ‘the best,’”

— Michael Porter

42. “As important as the dimensions of rivalry is whether rivals compete on the same dimensions. When all or many competitors aim to meet the same needs or compete on the same attributes, the result is zero-sum competition. P. 33.”

— Michael Porter

43. “Substitutes are always present, but they are easy to overlook because they may appear to be very different from the industry’s product p.31.”

— Michael Porter

44. “Thus a low-cost position protects the firm against all five competitive forces because bargaining can only continue to erode profits until those of the next most efficient competitor are eliminated, and because the less efficient competitors will suffer first in the face of competitive pressures.”

— Michael Porter

45. “Competition on dimensions other than price – on product features, support services, delivery time, or brand image, for instance – is less likely to erode profitability because it improves customer value and can support higher prices. p.32.”

— Michael Porter

46. “Indeed, one of the most important functions of an explicit, communicated strategy is to guide employees in making choices that arise because of trade-offs in their individual activities and in day-to-day decisions. Improving.”

— Michael Porter

47. “A production line with high levels of model variety is more valuable when combined with an inventory and order processing system that minimizes the need for stocking finished goods, a sales process equipped to explain and encourage customization, and an advertising theme that stresses the benefits of product variations that meet a customer’s special needs.”

— Michael Porter

48. “The more competitors perceive the prospect of dogged, bitter retaliation to the point of severely hurting everyone’s profits, the less likely they are of initiating the chain of events in the first place. This is analogous to the situation in which the robber says, “stick ’em up, I want your money,” and the deranged-looking victim says “If you take it, I will explode this bomb and kill us both!”

— Michael Porter

49. “If a firm can spot an industry in which the fragmented structure does not reflect the underlying economics of competition, this can provide a most significant strategic opportunity. A company can enter such an industry cheaply because of its initial structure. Since there are no underlying economic causes of fragmentation, none of the investment costs or risks of innovations to change underlying economic structure need be borne.”

— Michael Porter

50. “This is analogous to the situation in which the robber says, “stick ’em up, I want your money,” and the deranged-looking victim says “If you take it, I will explode this bomb and kill us both!”

— Michael Porter