Competitive Advantage (Porter)

Why it’s on the list: The sequel to Competitive Strategy that moved Porter’s analysis from the industry down into the firm — the value chain, the generic strategies, and the insistence that advantage be traced to something specific a company does differently. It supplies the vocabulary for the question an owner has to answer: why this business earns more than its competitors, and whether that can hold.

Where I heard about it

• Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, entry 41 of section IV (Value Investing, Finance, and Capitalism), cited as the Free Press 1998 reissue.
• On Nate Poulin’s DTC/Business reading list, posted September 2020 and saved by Kyle as I’m building a DTCBusiness reading… (tweet).

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
• Li Lu — the Himalaya Capital founder who assembled it.
• Michael Porter — the author.
• Competitive Advantage — the concept page this book named.
• Moats — the investor’s version of the same question: what makes the advantage durable.
• Strategy — the discipline the value chain was written for.