Unpacking Michael Porter's View on Business Strategy

In Michael Porter’s views of this idea, rather than focusing on the idea on international competitiveness, he switched the idea to advising the foreign governments to adjust the economic policies which he entered into the world of US Presidential commission.

Michael Porter was baffled by the act of betrayal and acted in his own independence when he saw strategy had actually lost its track in Mid 90s in a article. He could not bear to see the loss and he was determined to fight the battle for its rights. He wanted to get whole strategy to be back on the executive pyramid track again. He thinks that making time for strategy can make the business work faster as in many companies has abandoned the idea of strategy totally which he calls “Intellectual Potholes”. This type of strategy refers to the idea of producing a high-quality products at a low cost in consolidating the industry markets in practice.

He also agreed that in 1970s and 1980s, many companies had encountered problematic issues when they attempted strategy on their business competitive targets. And it seemed to be very fake attempt and quite hard to implement. At the same time, Japan had also held back the idea of implementation of strategy which made Porter to argue back for the reason of implementation was just to produce the high-quality products at a lower costs as compared towards your competitor and continuing improving for good. The last reason the need and the urgency of having a strategy is to keep on reinventing new ideas and methods and changing to achieve sustainable and competitive advantages and keep update with the for the whole company whereby there are last minute of sudden changes in the real business world which we couldn’t expect. The strategy would be considered outdated, rigid and not flexible before it was too late to be produced. For example Walmart kept on changing and reinventing their business strategies because they have a direction of their own business focus on how to create and achieve competitive advantages to sustain the businesses in the long run.

Not only that, sometimes Porter felt that the business firms need to make tough decisions like using strategy to create choices and trade-offs. It’s all about to be unique and emerge as the top among the rest of the competitors to become the top cost leader in the business world. He saw the factor- operational effectiveness is not the things we should focus greatly when coming to make choices. All the companies need to be very crystal clear of what are things and actions need to be taken and done which is beneficial to them and the whole organisation.

A lot of companies like to focus much on the artwork of operational effectiveness which turned out to be very practical which led the Japanese companies to turn focus onto this sector. The results reflected that Japanese companies are greatly obsessed with operational effectiveness and a lot of problems occurred for them. Porter also stressed that we have to set limits to work on the essence of the strategy and keep on trying, if not the business companies will not become very successful if they still remain in their rigid thinking and business style while still on the road of competition with its rivals. In actual fact, operational effectiveness tends to destroy the level of the competition among business rivals which can lead the consumers to redirect their focus on prices instead of looking the potentiality and sustainability of the business.

Nowadays there’s a lot of changes in technology advances and a lot of companies are becoming more diversified but the strategy still remains in place as the companies still focuses more on the five forces determining their profitability in the industry. Porter argued that the companies must have their own goals in order to achieve the results of the profitability with a power strategy implementation. Without setting strong goals achieve target directly, the companies will not be able to outgrow themselves and emerge to become the business leaders if they continue to stick to their old way.

They have to keep on continue the implementation of strategy in the long run to deliver the needs and requirements of the consumers and service them accordingly. The companies need to position themselves at the right spot of the continuity in order to achieve the result for the consumers. Sometimes the business companies need to differ themselves in terms of products and services etc in order to stand out as a unique and vague among the rest of the competitors. For example, Southwest Airlines has outgrown themselves by attempting different strategies even in more aggressive by implementing a new idea on how to attract different customers with different needs on different flights in terms of airfares pricing. The business companies need to understand the basic logic of balancing. The more open-minded of the companies, the more exposure and opportunities that they are going to gain and experience and improve for the better to create the value proposition.

He also felt the companies must have the ability to change constantly and becomes more effective through high-level of continuity. They will have to be more exposed towards strategy so that they can gain more roads of opportunities for value propositions. Business companies have to relook back on their core strategy when the former one is not effective anymore when continuity being discontinued. This kind of scenario usually happens when the consumers change or extends their needs in the environment or themselves.

Most of the times, a lot of companies make full utmost usage of new internet technology advances to add as a complementor with the existing technology to strengthen the core strategy. Porter also strongly encourages all the companies to experiment new methods for strategies, they can move to the next method if the results are proven to be effective and workable. Companies should grab all kinds of opportunities at all times to improve in their strategies.

However, in every company, there must have a company leader to lead the way in the trade-off platforms as they will receive tons of requests, needs, suggestions and ideas etc from internal staff and consumers or suppliers for the power of purchase and sale of products and services. If a company is good and flexible at continuity of changes at all times, they will definitely receive the fruits of success in due course once they have a crystal-clear and concise mindset and direction of their own. On the leader’s part, he or she has to ensure that the staff and top management are crystal-clear about the strategy that they are going to focus and align towards the company goals in order to achieve the competitive advantages, it also applies to all the departments as well. There’s always a cause and intention for whatever strategy we implement. Most importantly, the strategy has to be unique and different from other competitors they have and emerge to be the top among the rest, inspiring everyone to work towards the goal with the strategy implementation.

Frankly speaking, I totally agree with Michael Porter’s thoughts for idea of implementation of strategy and we should always have a clear and focused direction in ourselves first before we implement a strategy to work towards the company goal, including our personal lives as well. Because we must know what we want and achieve in due course. As the level of competition in the business world is very high, following the high intense of the technology advance, moreover the companies are becoming more diversified in the modern world, we have to keep on changing and improving the implementation of the strategy to achieve the competitive advantages and strengthen the sustainability of the business growth.

A lot of companies have gone bust or into bankruptcy etc either they don’t have strategies of their own or their strategies failed due to improper planning, lack of experience and knowledge, rigidness, unwilling to change and improve etc. Furthermore, we work with all kinds of people from all walks of lives at different levels and we need lots of feedback for further improvement on our strategies, attitudes etc. From there, we will be able to reconstruct the strategy and work against the vulnerability for survival from a well-implemented strategy.

We must also have a clear picture of how the strategy works and what are the competitive advantages that we can achieve from there etc. Especially when working in a diversified company, there must always two levels of strategies which are competitive and corporate strategy. We have to remain competitive constantly against our competitors to create lots of competitive advantages for the company and how the company run its own department.