Porter is not a Beach Read

The other day, I made a grave mistake, it was innocent, but I, unlike most politicians will own up to this. I will not say I "regret" it. Nope! I messed up--may fault. I colleague of mine was asking me what CI books I recommend. Well of course, Porter's Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage, Books by Leonard Fuld, Helen Rothberg, Jan Herring and the list went on. All the classics. What I did not know was that she would go out and buy the first one on the list and read it while on vacation, on the beach. Yea, Porter's books as beach reads! No one ever said--"Hey I was looking for some light reading entertainment, while drinking heavily on the Beach and it was Michael Porter and it changed my life!!!" I think seasoned CI professionals are seeing where this is going. Porter's books, however good --they are not beach reads. In fact if you are just making the plunge into CI they are not the first things you want to start with if you plan to do practical application of the principles. Don't get me wrong, Porter's materials should be mandatory reading for any CI professional, they provide foundational concepts you need to master if you are going to be good at what you do.

Porter, Herring, Fuld, Gilad, Heuer, Fleisher, Rothberg, Bensoussan, Naylor, and others are the authors of books I read when I first took my plunge into CI. Everyone told me about them. So I read all of his stuff cover to cover. I still read every new CI book published. I even read the book "Competitive Intelligence for Dummies" because my boss at the time told me to and give a review--what to know what it was? It STUNK! Don't bother with it! So when I finished reading the classics, I thought--"this is great but how do I apply all of this?" There is no practical way ahead. Then I discovered the Academy of Competitive Intelligence and from there, and 15 years of trying out new things, testing them, many annoying emails and phone calls to the instructors and authors, I finally got to the point where I made it all practical. The best thing is it all works!!! Its enduring. I don't give a darn about what other CI people say: "its dated"; "We are in a different era"; "that was for another time"--they are wrong. Look Newton's laws of Gravity from the 1700s still apply today--apples still fall down from trees. The same with markets--you have buyers, suppliers, competitors, new entrants, and substitutes--it worked 2,000 years ago and the basics of the economy still apply today. Fundamentals matter. Vince Lombardi once said to his team "Gentlemen, if you can't master the fundamentals you have no business playing football!". The same thing applies to Competitive Intelligence--master the fundamentals--or go into marketing.

So, getting back to the beach. Porter's stuff is "the fundamentals", but its not recreational reading. You don't take Porter to the beach. That was my fault. I got an earful about that at a recent meeting. She event took a selfie reading the book, on the beach, drinking one of those fufu drinks they serve at those places--you know with the layers of colors and an umbrella. So I had to act quickly. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a copy of "The Opposite of Noise" by Ben Gilad and told her to start here. Please don't ask my why I happened to have a copy of this book in my backpack, while I was on travel--just accept it. No real CI endeavor should be taken unless there is a healthy amount of good humor and sarcasm going along with it. Let's see what she says after taking the plunge into this new book.