4. Michael E Porter

4. MICHAEL E PORTER Michael E Porter is the Bishop William Laurence University Professor at the Harvard Business School. Porter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father was an army officer. He studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and then switched to business, earning an MBA and a PhD in economics from Harvard. He later joined the faculty there. It is said that Porter has always been obsessed by competition. Unfortunately, he slipped from the number one position he held in the 2005 list to the fourth position in the 2007 list. # Books that he wrote: Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (1980) # Comparative Advantage (1985) # The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) # Can Japan Compete? (1999) Image: Michael Porter is awarded an honorary doctorate at the Graduate School of Managment in Leipzig, eastern Germany. | Photograph: Sebastian Willnow/AFP/Getty Images Also read: 10 wonderful stocks to invest in