具体描述
内容简介
Now beyond its 11th printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter's The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter's groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America.
Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter's "diamond," a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of "clusters," or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy.
Even before publication of the book, Porter's theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured. 作者简介
Michael E. Porter, one of the world's leading authorities on competitive strategy and international competitiveness, is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. In 1983, Professor Porter was appointed to President Reagan's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness, the initiative that triggered the competitiveness debate in America. He serves as an advisor to heads of state, governors, mayors, and CEOs throughout the world. The recipient of the Wells Prize in Economics, the Adam Smith Award, three McKinsey Awards, and honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics and six other universities, Porter is the author of fourteen books, among them Competitive Strategy, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, and Cases in Competitive Strategy, all published by The Free Press. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. 精彩书评
Building on his Competitive Strategy ( LJ 10/1/80) and Competitive Advantage ( LJ 3/1/86), which dealt with competition among companies, Porter here presents a new theory to explain global success. He identifies the fundamental determinants of national competitive advantage in an industry, shows how they work together as a system, and examines "clustering," in which groups of successful firms and industries emerge in one country to gain leading positions in the world market. This important work, based upon research conducted in ten nations, provides important data for both companies and governments. Highly recommended for academic, corporate, and large public libraries.
-- Leonard Grundt, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, N.Y. 目录
Contents
Introduction
Preface
The Need for a New Paradigm
Conflicting Explanations
Asking the Right Question
Classical Rationales for Industry Success
The Need for a New Paradigm
Toward a New Theory of National Competitive Advantage
The Study
A Broader Concept of Competitive Advantage
Foundations
The Competitive Advantage of Firms in Global Industries
Competitive Strategy
Competing Internationally
The Role of National Circumstances in Competitive
Success
Determinants of National Competitive Advantage
Determinants of National Advantage
Factor Conditions
Demand Conditions
Related and Supporting Industries
Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry
The Role of Chance
The Role of Government
The Determinants in Perspective
The Dynamics of National Advantage
Relationships Among the Determinants
The Determinants as a System
Clustering of Competitive Industries
The Role of Geographic Concentration
The Genesis and Evolution of a Competitive Industry
The Loss of National Advantage
The Diamond in Perspective
Industries
Four Studies in National Competitive Advantage
The German Printing Press Industry
The American Patient Monitoring Equipment Industry
The Italian Ceramic Tile Industry
The Japanese Robotics Industry
National Competitive Advantage in Services
The Growing Role of Services in National Economies
International Competition in Services
The Relationship Between Services and Manufacturing
National Competitive Advantage in Services
Case Studies in the Development of Competitive Service Industries
Nations
Patterns of National Competitive Advantage
The Early Postwar Winners
American Postwar Dominance
Stable Switzerland
Sweden's Choices
Renewing German Dynamism
Emerging Nations in the 1970s and 1980s
The Rise of Japan
Surging Italy
Emerging Korea
Shifting National Advantage
The Slide of Britain
Crosscurrents in America
Postwar Development in Perspective
The Competitive Development of National Economies
Economic Development
Stages of Competitive Development
The Stages and the Postwar Economies of Nations
Postwar Economic Progress in Perspective
Implications
Company Strategy
Competitive Advantage in International Competition
The Context for Competitive Advantage
Improving the National Competitive Environment
Where and How to Compete Tapping Selective Advantages in Other Nations
Locating the Home Base
The Role of Leadership
Government Policy
Premises of Government Policy Toward Industry
Government Policy and National Advantage
Government's Effect on Factor Conditions
Government's Effect on Demand Conditions
Government's Effect on Related and Supporting Industries
Government's Effect on Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry
Government Policy and the Stages of Competitive Development
Targeting
Government Policy in Developing Nations
The Role of Government
National Agendas
The Agenda for Korea
The Agenda for Italy
The Agenda for Sweden
The Agenda for Japan
The Agenda for Switzerland
The Agenda for Germany
The Agenda for Britain
The Agenda for the United States
National Agendas in Perspective
Epilogue
Methodology for Preparing the Cluster Charts
Appendix B
Notes
References
Index
About the Author 精彩书摘
Chapter 1
The Need for a New Paradigm
Why do some nations succeed and others fail in international competition? This question is perhaps the most frequently asked economic question of our times. Competitiveness has become one of the central preoccupations of government and industry in every nation. The United States is an obvious example, with its growing public debate about the apparently greater economic success of other trading nations. But intense debate about competitiveness is also taking place today in such "success story" nations as Japan and Korea. Socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and others in Eastern Europe and Asia are also asking this question as they fundamentally reappraise their economic systems.
Yet although the question is frequently asked, it is the wrong question if the aim is to best expose the underpinnings of economic prosperity for either firms or nations. We must focus instead on another, much narrower one. This is: why does a nation become the home base for successful international competitors in an industry? Or, to put it somewhat differently, why are firms based in a particular nation able to create and sustain competitive advantage against the world's best competitors in a particular field? And why is one nation often the home for so many of an industry's world leaders?
How can we explain why Germany is the home base for so many of the world's leading makers of printing presses, luxury cars, and chemicals? Why is tiny Switzerland the home base for international leaders in pharmaceuticals, chocolate, and trading? Why are leaders in heavy trucks and mining equipment based in Sweden? Why has America produced the preeminent international competitors in personal computers, software, credit cards, and movies? Why are Italian firms so strong in ceramic tiles, ski boots, packaging machinery, and factory automation equipment? What makes Japanese firms so dominant in consumer electronics, cameras, robotics, and facsimile machines?
The answers are obviously of central concern to firms that must compete in increasingly international markets. A firm must understand what it is about its home nation that is most crucial in determining its ability, or inability, to create and sustain competitive advantage in international terms. But the same question will prove to be a decisive one for national economic prosperity as well. As we will see, a nation's standard of living in the long term depends on its ability to attain a high and rising level of productivity in the industries in which its firms compete. This rests on the capacity of its firms to achieve improving quality or greater efficiency. The influence of the home nation on the pursuit of competitive advantage in particular fields is of central importance to the level and rate of productivity growth achievable.
But we lack a convincing explanation of the influence of the nation. The long-dominant paradigm for why nations succeed internationally in particular industries is showing signs of strain. There is an extensive history of theories to explain the patterns of nations' exports and imports, dating back to the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the eighteenth century. It has become generally recognized, however, that these theories have grown inadequate to the task. Changes in the nature of international competition, among them the rise of the multinational corporation that not only exports but competes abroad via foreign subsidiaries, have weakened the traditional explanations for why and where a nation exports. While new rationales have been proposed, none is sufficient to explain why firms based in particular nations are able to compete successfully, through both exporting and foreign investment, in particular industries. Nor can they explain why a nation's firms are able to sustain their competitive positions over considerable periods of time.
Explaining the role played by a nation's economic environment, institutions, and policies in the competitive success of its finns in particular industries is the subject of this book. It seeks to isolate the competitive advantage of a nation, that is, the national attributes that foster competitive advantage in an industry. Drawing on my study of ten nations and the detailed histories of over one hundred industries, I will present in Part I a theory of the competitive advantage of nations in particular fields. In Part II, I will illustrate how the theory can be employed to explain the competitive success of particular nations in a number of individual industries. In Part III, I will use the theory to shed light on the overall patterns of industry success and failure in the economies of the nations we studied and how the patterns have been changing. This will serve as the basis for presenting a framework to explain how entire national economies advance in competitive terms. Finally, in Part IV, I will develop the implications of my theory for both company strategy and government policy, The book concludes with a chapter entitled "National Agendas," which illustrates how the theory can be used to identify some of the most important issues that will shape future economic progress in each of the nations I studied.
Before presenting my theory, however, I must explain why efforts to explain the competitiveness of an entire nation have been unconvincing, and why attempting to do so is tackling the wrong question. I must demonstrate that understanding the reasons for the ability of the nation's firms to create and sustain competitive advantage in particular industries is addressing the right question, not only for informing company strategy but also for achieving national economic goals. I must also describe why there is a growing consensus that the dominant paradigm used to date to explain international success in particular industries is inadequate, and why even recent efforts to modify it still do not address some of the most central questions. Finally, I will describe the study that was conducted so, that the reader will understand the factual foundations of what follows.
CONFLICTING EXPLANATIONS
There has been no shortage of explanations for why some nations are competitive and others are not. Yet these explanations are often conflicting, and there is no generally accepted theory. It is far from clear what the term "competitive" means when referring to a nation. This is a major part of the difficulty, as we will see. That there has been intense debate in many nations about whether they have a competitiveness problem in the first place is a sure sign that the subject is not completely understood.
Some see national competitiveness as a macroeconomic phenomenon, driven by such variables as exchange rates, interest rates, and government deficits. But nations have enjoyed rapidly rising living standards despite budget deficits (Japan, Italy, and Korea), appreciating currencies (Germany and Switzerland), and high interest rates (Italy and Korea).
Others argue that competitiveness is a function of cheap and abundant labor. Yet nations such as Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden have prospered despite high wages and long periods of labor shortage. Japan, with an economy supposedly built on cheap, abundant labor, has also experienced pressing labor shortages. Its firms have succeeded internationally in many industries only after automating away much of the labor content. The ability to compete despite paying high wages would seem to represent a far more desirable national target.
Another view is that competitiveness depends on possessing bountiful natural resources. Recently, however, the most successful trading nations, among them Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, and Korea, have been countries with limited natural resources that must import most raw materials. It is also interesting to note that within nations such as Korea, the United Kingdom, and Germany, it is the resource-poor regions that are prospering relative to the resource-rich ones.
More recently, many have argued that competitiveness is most strongly influenced by government policy. This view identifies targeting, protection, export promotion, and subsidies as the keys to international success. Evidence is drawn from the study of a few nations (notably Japan and Korea) and a few large, highly visible industries such as automobiles, steel, shipbuilding, and semiconductors. Yet such a decisive role for government policy in competitiveness is not confirmed by a broader survey of experience. Many observers would consider government policy toward industry in Italy, for example, to have been largely ineffectual in much of the postwar period, but Italy has seen a rise in world export share second only to Japan along with a rapidly rising standard of living.
Significant government policy intervention has occurred in only a subset of industries, and it is far from universally successful even in Japan and Korea. In Japan, for example, government's role in such important industries as facsimile, copiers, robotics, and advanced materials has been modest, and such frequently cited examples of successful Japanese policy as sewing machines, steel, and shipbuilding are now dated. Conversely, sustained targeting by Japan of industries such as aircraft (first targeted in 1971) and software (1978) has failed to yield meaningful international positions. Aggressive Korean targeting in large, important sectors such as chemicals and machinery has also failed to lead to significant market positions. Looking across nations, the industries in which government has been most heavily involved have, for the most part, been unsuccessful in international terms. Government is indeed an actor in international competition, but rarely does it have the starting role.
A final popular explanation for national competitiveness is differences in management practices, including labor-management relations. Japanese management has been particularly celebrated in the 1980s, just as American management was in the 1950s and 1960s. The problem with this explanation, however, is that different i... 前言/序言
《国家竞争优势》(The Competitive Advantage of Nations) (英文原版,精装版)图书简介 《国家竞争优势》(The Competitive Advantage of Nations)是迈克尔·波特(Michael E. Porter)于1990年首次出版的开创性著作。本书深刻地改变了人们对国家经济实力和全球竞争格局的理解,提出了一套革命性的分析框架——钻石模型(Diamond Model),用以解释为何某些国家能够在特定的产业中持续保持全球领先地位。 波特挑战了传统上侧重于要素禀赋(如廉价劳动力或自然资源)的比较优势理论,转而强调在现代知识经济中,动态的、由内生的竞争因素所驱动的优势才是决定国家产业竞争力的关键。本书是一部跨越经济学、战略管理和国际贸易领域的里程碑式作品,对于政策制定者、企业高管以及经济学者都具有深远的影响。 核心理论:钻石模型(The Diamond Model) 本书的核心贡献在于波特精心构建的“国家竞争优势钻石模型”。该模型由四个相互关联的要素构成,这些要素共同作用,形成了一个国家在特定产业中取得和维持竞争优势的环境基础: 1. 要素条件(Factor Conditions): 波特强调,决定国家竞争力的并非那些“普通”或“易于获取”的要素(如非熟练劳动力或自然资源),而是那些“专业化”和“先进”的要素。这些先进要素包括高度专业化的技术人员、先进的基础设施、世界级的大学和研究机构,以及高度专门化的知识体系。这些稀缺且难以模仿的要素,是产业升级和创新的起点。要素的“提升”和“集中”是国家竞争力的关键所在。 2. 需求条件(Home-Market Demand Conditions): 国内市场的规模固然重要,但更关键的是国内需求的“性质”。如果国内买家对产品和服务的标准要求极高、品味极其挑剔、或者对创新需求迫切,这会迫使本国企业在本土市场就必须不断改进和创新,以满足最苛刻的要求。这种在本土市场磨练出的能力,使得本国企业在走向国际市场时,面对外部竞争时具有天然的优势。严苛的国内需求是创新的强大驱动力。 3. 相关及支持产业(Related and Supporting Industries): 一个国家在一个产业中取得优势,往往依赖于其他相关和支持产业的全球竞争力。例如,德国的机械制造业的成功,离不开其在精密加工、材料科学和专业设备制造等领域强大的供应商网络。这些本地化的、具有竞争力的供应商网络形成了一个生态系统,它们之间的紧密协作、信息共享和快速响应,降低了企业的运营成本,加快了技术扩散的速度,并促进了持续的创新活动。 4. 企业战略、结构和同质竞争(Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry): 国家内部企业所采取的战略、组织结构以及它们之间的竞争激烈程度,是钻石模型的驱动力。波特认为,激烈的本土竞争能够迫使企业不断追求卓越、降低成本、并进行根本性的创新,从而避免自满。如果企业结构分散、管理层缺乏远见,或者本土竞争不足,企业往往在国际市场上难以存活。成功的企业往往是在本土就经历了“残酷洗礼”的。 钻石的相互作用与政府、机遇的作用 波特强调,这四个要素并非孤立存在,而是通过复杂的相互作用(Linkages)来强化彼此的优势,形成一个正反馈循环。一个要素的提升会带动其他要素的进步。 此外,本书还阐述了两个重要的外部变量如何影响钻石的形状和强度: 政府的作用(The Role of Government): 政府不应直接创造竞争优势,而是应该充当“催化剂”或“压力源”。有效的政府行为在于投资于先进要素(教育、基础设施),制定严格的环境和安全标准(影响需求条件),以及促进有利的竞争环境。政府的干预必须是战略性的,以提升本国企业的竞争基础,而非提供不必要的补贴。 机遇的作用(The Role of Chance): 突发的、无法预测的外部事件(如战争、技术突破、主要经济体的政策转向等)可以重塑产业格局,为新的国家竞争者提供进入市场的机会。这些机遇往往被那些在国内拥有强大竞争基础(钻石结构牢固)的国家所抓住。 超越比较优势:动态性与知识经济 《国家竞争优势》的深远意义在于它将目光从静态的资源禀赋转向了动态的、可创造的竞争优势。波特论证了在知识密集型经济中,可持续的竞争优势不是靠“拥有”什么,而是靠“创造”什么。竞争优势是内生的、需要持续投资和培育的。本书提供了一个全面的框架,解释了为何一些看似资源禀赋平平的国家(如瑞士、丹麦),却能在特定的高附加值产业中傲视群雄。 本书内容详实,深入分析了诸如半导体、汽车制造、航空航天、金融服务等多个关键产业的案例,展示了钻石模型在现实世界中的应用和解释力。它为国家经济发展战略提供了强有力的理论基础,强调了提升本土创新生态系统和培育激烈本土竞争环境的重要性,而非单纯依赖外部投资或贸易保护。