Michael Porter

Porter published 'How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy' in Harvard Business Review in 1979, importing industrial-organization economics into management — a field that had studied industry structure to curb excess profits, which Porter inverted to teach firms how to earn them. Competitive Strategy followed in 1980 and made industry analysis a discipline; he remains among the most cited scholars in business.

Porter built the academic foundation that modern strategy stands on — or argues with. Five Forces reframed competition as a property of industry structure rather than a list of rivals; his generic strategies (cost leadership, differentiation, focus) and value chain gave the field its core instruments. Nearly every strategy framework since positions itself relative to him: Blue Ocean explicitly writes against his structural determinism, and Thiel's monopoly thesis radicalizes his profit logic. Fifty years on, 'what would entry, substitutes, buyers, and suppliers do to these margins?' remains the fastest sanity check in business.