In an age when management gurus are both lauded by the faithful and hounded by the critics, Michael Porter seems to be one of the few who is well-accepted both academically and in the business world. Though he has his critics, Porter has generally been viewed as at the leading edge of strategic thinking since his first major publication, Competitive Strategy (1980), which became a corporate bible for many in the early 1980s.
Born in 1947, Porter completed a degree in aeronautical engineering at Princeton in 1969 and took an economics doctorate at Harvard, joining the faculty there as a tenured professor at the age of 26. He has acted as consultant to companies and to governments and, like many academics, has set up a consulting company – Monitor.