Strategic management

If management was the broad idea that allowed large companies to be run efficiently, strategic management was the vital refinement that permitted managers and their companies to “compete, win and survive”, to quote Walter Kiechel’s lively account of this revolution in The Lords of Strategy.

Michael Porter, the Harvard University academic, is the central figure in defining the concept. The pillars of strategic management are underpinned by his two books, Competitive Strategy (1980), which defined the “five basic forces” that determine the state of competition in any industry – customer power, supplier power, the threat of new entrants, substitute products and rivalry between established competitors – and Competitive Advantage (1985), which told chief executives how to retain their lead over rivals.