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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Having read what I think is the most famous of those books (_Competitive Strategy_), I'm wondering what aspect of Porter's writing you think catalyzes "greed is good".

The normal ding on Porter seems to be that he's no longer relevant.

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You make another interesting point about his relevancy, since as I read the article, it really felt it was more like coattail riding by a consultant, moving from advocating a CSR framework to a "the new new thing is" CSV framework, upon which to advise corporate clients and create some kind of relevancy. The Social Enterprise "thing" is big at Harvard Business School and Kennedy School and in reading the article, it is sprinkled with more anecdotes rather than new intellectual models or frameworks on anything new.

In a way your correct criticism of my using the word drove actually supplied the word that would have been better to use, catalyze. I think his books, and articles catalyzed a corporate movement that might have happened with or without his writing and consulting. My point in the original comment was that who he is, is what makes the article of interest. I didn't mean to judge or characterize what he did, that was not my point, I was not passing judgement.

So I mentioned greed is good for context not judgment, but to actually answer your question as to whether I think Competitive Strategy catalyzed anything, I would have to answer "yes", but only based anecdotally on graduating from an Ivy League School in the 80s where all my cohorts went on to jobs on Wall Street at investment banks and that book was secret key to mastery of the universe. But that is only my anecdote not fact, proof, or scientific study.

I will rewrite my post and substitute the phrase "seized upon" for "drove".

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