Leading Management Gurus Michael Porter and Clay Christensen
Disagree on Harvard Business School’s Strategy for Online Course Offerings:
Key highlight from the excellent NYTIMES article:
“Here is where the two
professors’ differences come to a head. In the Porter model, all of a company’s
activities should be mutually reinforcing. By integrating everything into one,
cohesive fortification, “any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy must
replicate a whole system,” Professor Porter wrote.
In the Christensen
model, these very fortifications become a liability. In the steel industry,
which was blindsided by new technology in smaller and cheaper minimills,
heavily integrated companies couldn’t move quickly and ended up entombed inside
their elaborately constructed defenses.”