Competitive Strategy

What Is Strategy

By: Michael Porter

Narrated by: Deaver Brown

Length: 1 hr and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

This audiobook was created based on Michael Porter's landmark book Competitive Strategy. This was Mr. Porter's synopsis of his book for the Harvard Business Review. This audiobook emphasizes that operational effectiveness is not strategy, that strategy rests on unique activities done by the organization, strategic positioning, the entrepreneurial edge, generic and specific strategies, that sustainable strategic positions require trade offs, that proper fit drives both competitive advantage and sustainability, rediscovering focused strategies, the failure of blurred and straddled strategies, the growth trap, that profitable growth is often niche oriented, the role of leadership in creating and maintaining clear strategies, and that the new entrant and new company advantage is executing clear strategies.

©2010 Michael Porter (P)2010 Christina Brown

awful recording quality.

the constant is good and concise. problem is mainly the awful recording quality, vary inconsistent throughout the book, variable volume, lack of low frequencies, changing reading pace, wired pauses...

Great book

Pretty much summarize Great by choice by Jim Collins (which is another great book) and takes about a fifth of the time to read. Highly recommended!

Meh... Not as good as I expected

Unfortunately I can't recommend this program. It was very poorly read. It was very obvious that the narrator or the writing was dry. Although a few good examples of cases were pointed out. it did not bring anything else to help this MBA student.

Good info, okay audible lecture

I really enjoy Michael Porter's writing style and brilliance. Listening to the narrator was more like sitting through a lecture than listening to the words professor Porter wrote. It was cheap and worth the price I paid. Good info. Okay audible version. I enjoyed the physical book more.

Great content, poor reading style

Would you consider the audio edition of Competitive Strategy to be better than the print version?

Absolutely not. I have read the original article by Porter at the HBR magazine. I wanted to have the text in audio to listen to it again and reinforce concepts while driving. However, the reading is rather poor, the voice of the reader is monotonous, there is no sound editing, the noise of the cracking chair of the reader in the background distracts and, overall, the audio quality is not satisfying.

What did you like best about this story?

The contents. Michael Porter's ideas are very useful and powerful

What didn’t you like about Deaver Brown’s performance?

The reading is disapassionate and rather poor, the voice of the reader is monotonous, there is no sound editing (e.g. a sound indicating a change of section), the noise of the cracking chair of the reader in the background speaks of sloppiness in the recording process and, overall, the audio quality is not satisfying as the driving normal sounds require high quality of the recording.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. The monotonous reading was a deterrant of this. Only the qaulity of the contents prevented me from not finishing the audiobook.

Any additional comments?

Michael Porter's work deserves much better audiobook quality!.

Estae bien

No es el libro completo, sería fantástico que alarasen eso desde el principio, haría las cosas más fáciles. Aunque el capítulo es muy bueno.

Poor quality recording and lifeless reading.

How could the performance have been better?

The sound was recorded in mono, not stereo, so that was bad. I found it difficult to want to listen to this reader drone on and on. You could hear his chair squeak when he moved. The sound quality was akin to that of recording something on a tape recorder in your basement with a tape recorder from the 80's. My voice mail has higher quality audio than this. All of these items make this a fairly amateur attempt at this reading.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

not really.

Any additional comments?

Don't spend your time or money on this. I'm sure the content is good because Porter wrote it, but I won't find out from this audible recording because I couldn't take more than 10 minutes of it.

Michael Porter may need a publicist

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Find someone other than Peter from Family Guy to handle the performance.

What did you like best about this story?

Great content and brief reminders of Porter's work.

Would you be willing to try another one of Deaver Brown’s performances?

Not likely.

Any additional comments?

This is the second Porter Audible book that I've read that has had some challenging reviews of the performer. I didn't mind the (albeit slightly quirky) performer from Understanding Michael Porter but this one was pretty intolerable.

Porter may need a publicist.
Audible may wish to scrutinize performances for the sake of quality and brand.

short and sweet

short sweet and to the point, I did expect it to be more in depth, however it was precise which helped weed out too much fluff that many authors do when writing.

Great synopsis of strategy

Great synopsis of strategy that addresses the basic principles without a lot of fluff. It separates operational efficiency from strategy making clear what is required to generate a sustainable competitive advantage.