Evolution of generic competitive strategies and the importance of Michael E. Porter

Abstract

Generic competitive strategies are considered almost as archetypes in Business Administration, sometimes leading to over simplification of their concepts as well as underestimation of their importance. Since publication in 1980, as part of Michael E. Porter's book Competitive Strategy, the generic strategies of Differentiation, Leadership in Total Cost and Focus have been used in whole or in part, in various approaches, accelerating dissemination of Porter's work and the subject itself. As a contribution to the development of knowledge about generic strategies, extensive research was carried out comparing the best known proposals such as such as the outpacing strategies (GILBERT; STREBEL, 1987, 1989), the value disciplines (TREACY; WIERSEMA, 1995), and the Delta Project (HAX; WILDE, 2001) among others, while adopting Porter's work (1980) as reference. It becomes evident that this work is not only versatile, as confirmed by use in proposals of other authors, but that it remains up to date, influential and can serve as a basis for conceptual advances of more recent complementary proposals and development of unique strategies by organizations.