Michael Porter first developed his ideas on competitive strategy in a famous course at the Harvard Business School. As described in Competitive Strategy, Porter finds three types of tools for strategy development. The first is the "general analytic techniques," applicable to any industry or competition, which allow an indepth analysis of such competitive issues as industry evolution, competition profiling, strategy toward suppliers and buyers, entry barriers, and market signals. The second is tools for analyzing "generic structure settings," or characteristic types of industry structures such as fragmented industries, global industries, and declining industries. The third is tools for making such strategic decisions as capacity expansion, integration, entry, divestment, and coalition.

Each of the 18 industries in Cases in Competitive Strategy provides an opportunity for analysis using these tools. The intent of the book is cumulative, building through successively complex situations to an overview of how, when, and why various offensive and defensive strategic decisions can and should be made.

Though the cases in Cases in Competitive Strategy are significant and informative when studied on their own, they were designed to be read and analyzed in combination with the companion volume, Competitive Strategy. Used this way, both the conceptual materials and the cases themselves are mutually reinforcing, establishing in the reader's mind the connection between the theory and the practice of competitive strategy formulation. No student of business strategy can afford to be without this broad-range series of applications of the most talked-about topic in business today.