Strategy and the Internet

M. E. Porter

Article | Harvard Business Review | March 2001

Strategy and the Internet

Abstract

Many of the pioneers of Internet business, both dot-coms and established companies, have competed in ways that violate nearly every precept of good strategy. Rather than focus on profits, they have chased customers indiscriminately through discounting, channel incentives, and advertising. Rather than concentrate on delivering value that earns an attractive price from customers, they have pursued indirect revenues such as advertising and click-through fees. Rather than make trade-offs, they have rushed to offer every conceivable product or service.

It did not have to be this way—and it does not have to be in the future. When it comes to reinforcing a distinctive strategy, Michael Porter argues, the Internet provides a better technological platform than previous generations of IT. Gaining competitive advantage does not require a radically new approach to business; it requires building on the proven principles of effective strategy.

Porter argues that, contrary to recent thought, the Internet is not disruptive to most existing industries and established companies. It rarely nullifies important sources of competitive advantage in an industry; it often makes them even more valuable. And as all companies embrace Internet technology, the Internet itself will be neutralized as a source of advantage. Robust competitive advantages will arise instead from traditional strengths such as unique products, proprietary content, and distinctive physical activities. Internet technology may be able to fortify those advantages, but it is unlikely to supplant them.

Porter debunks such Internet myths as first-mover advantage, the power of virtual companies, and the multiplying rewards of network effects. He disentangles the distorted signals from the marketplace, explains why the Internet complements rather than cannibalizes existing ways of doing business, and outlines strategic imperatives for dot-coms and traditional companies.

Keywords: Strategy; Online Technology;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Porter, M. E. "Strategy and the Internet." Harvard Business Review 79, no. 3 (March 2001): 62–78.

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2001 McKinsey Award

Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

PayPal: The Next Chapter

Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb

Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring that low-income consumers and small businesses can efficiently and inexpensively manage their money. The company fully lives into this purpose, sending employees out into communities to experience firsthand the indignities and high fees imposed on the unbanked, dramatically lowering the cost of international remittances, enabling small businesses to access working capital without credit checks, and facilitating cross-border purchases for small merchants. The company takes the welfare of each stakeholder group seriously: achieving racial and gender pay equity, raising hourly worker pay and benefits to ensure a living wage, and building a diverse and inclusive culture; working closely with regulators and law enforcement to unearth signs of sex trafficking and terrorism; aggressively removing hate-group transactions; providing $4 billion in credit to hundreds of thousands of small businesses that would never have qualified for bank loans, especially those owned by women and people of color. Together these actions have built a high degree of trust that creates a competitive moat in the otherwise commodity business of online payments. During the pandemic, the company was able to get stimulus funds to individuals and small businesses far faster and less expensively than banks or the SBA, and committed $500 million to investments in black-owned businesses. In the 5 years since its IPO, despite intense competition from major banks and credit card companies, Google, Apple, and countless VC-backed fintech players, the company has more than doubled its users, increased profits and boosted the stock price 500%.

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Finance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Entrepreneurship; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry;

Citation:

Porter, Michael, Mark Kramer, and Annelena Lobb. "PayPal: The Next Chapter." Harvard Business School Case 721-378, August 2020. View Details

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As the diffusion of value-based health care efforts accelerates globally, the need for interoperable information technology systems that support value-based care is essential. Such systems are needed to facilitate dramatic improvements in patient outcomes and efficiency and, importantly, to end an era in which health IT has entrenched the status quo, perpetuated silos, and blocked reimbursement reform. A value-enabling IT platform must organize data around conditions and must enable integrated practice units to integrate care both within and across health systems. In addition, the electronic health record should be the sole source of costing information so that accurate costs for every encounter can be tracked, aggregated, shared, and used for improvement. This is the next generation of health care IT.

Since its establishment in 2005, Hamburg’s Martini Klinik had single mindedly focused on prostate cancer care with a commitment to measure long-term health outcomes for every patient. A wholly owned subsidiary of the University Hospital Hamburg, Martini Klinik was a “hospital in a hospital” in close proximity to other medical departments and services. By 2019, Martini Klinik had become the largest prostate cancer treatment program in the world with 8,000 outpatient cases and more than 2,500 surgical cases annually. Patients came from all over Germany and from around the world. A new and expanded facility was under construction to have the capacity to manage more patients with prostate cancer.

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Strategy and the Internet

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