Lords of Strategy

7.

Michael PorterEncounters theSurreal

ONE MIGHT HAVE EXPECTED the strategy revolution to have been hatched at one of those institutions whose purpose is to study the management of companies and educate their future leaders—a business school, in other words. To the contrary. Business schools first turned their noses up at evolving modern conceptions of strategy, then seemed to resist their advance. Their disdain extended to scholars who tried to bring the subject into their halls, in particular Michael Porter, who would eventually become the most famous business-school professor of all time. To get there, though, he would have to fight off academic elders who wanted to deny him a job, and then thoroughly disrupt both the curriculum and the pedagogy ...