Michael Eugene Porter born May 23, 1947 is an American academic known for his theories on economics, multiple strategy, in addition to social causes. He is a Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Porter's five forces analysis, which is instrumental in combine strategy coding today.
Michael Porter's father was a civil engineer as well as Georgia Tech graduate who had gone on to a career as an army officer. Michael Eugene Porter received a BSE with high honors in aerospace together with mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he graduated first in his classes and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an MBA with high distinction in 1971 from Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a PhD in business economics from Harvard University in 1973.
Porter said in an interview that he first became interested in competition through sports. He was on the NCAA championship golf squad at Princeton and also played football, baseball and basketball growing up.
Porter credits Harvard professor Roland "Chris" Christensen with inspiring him and encouraging him to speak up during class, hand-writing Porter a note that began: "Mr. Porter, you create a lot to contribute in a collection of matters sharing a common atttributes and I hope you will." Porter reached the top of the classes by theyear at Harvard Business School.
At Harvard, Porter took classes in industrial organization economics, which attempts to model the case of competitive forces on industries and their profitability. This analyse inspired the Porter five forces analysis framework for analyzing industries.