> I'm curious then, who were the authorities/what were the theories (if any I guess) that were used for your management degree?
It felt like a very sporadic hodge podge of names. Porter's five forces, tech cycle, a load of case studies.
That's looking back a decade later, so maybe I'm missing something.
But it all seemed very vague. I remember thinking how on earth did Porter get his name on a "theory" when really that's just common sense? A company is going to tend to have customers, suppliers, entrants, and substitutes, and internal rivalry. I mean why would you think otherwise? Also, creating those categories is no guarantee that you're not going to miss out something.
If anything I've learned more about management from reading agile type stuff like Scrum, because those kinds of things are usually grounded in experience from a specific industry, with specific pain points and specific solutions.
> I remember thinking how on earth did Porter get his name on a "theory" when really that's just common sense?
This is how I've always felt about "De Morgan's Laws". There are two, and they state:
1. If it is not the case that two things are both true, then at least one of those things is false.
2. If it is not the case that either of two things is true, then both of those things are false.
(Actually, they are logical equivalences, so they also apply in the other order -- "1b. If at least one of two things is false, then it is not the case that both things are true.")
I'm pretty sure both of those "laws" were known well before the nineteenth century.
It felt like a very sporadic hodge podge of names. Porter's five forces, tech cycle, a load of case studies.
That's looking back a decade later, so maybe I'm missing something.
But it all seemed very vague. I remember thinking how on earth did Porter get his name on a "theory" when really that's just common sense? A company is going to tend to have customers, suppliers, entrants, and substitutes, and internal rivalry. I mean why would you think otherwise? Also, creating those categories is no guarantee that you're not going to miss out something.
If anything I've learned more about management from reading agile type stuff like Scrum, because those kinds of things are usually grounded in experience from a specific industry, with specific pain points and specific solutions.