Robert M. Grant (economist)

Robert Morris Grant (born in Bristol UK on January 23, 1948) is a British professor and economic strategy academic^[1] who challenged Michael Porter's views on the basis for competitive advantage. He suggested that competitive advantage was more frequently to be discovered in access to distinctive or unique internal resources, rather than a choice between the different forms of generic strategies externally. He is now Eni Professor of Strategic Management at Bocconi University in Milan.^[2]

Grant is best known for his suggestion that insights into competitive positioning were more likely to come from understanding a company's resource base rather than from its generic strategies. He particularly focused on the extent to which organizations had non-imitable resources. Grant's work has close links to Gary Hamel and Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad – in the form of 'core competencies'. In many ways Grant's 'resources' and Hamel and Prahalad's 'core competencies' overlap to a considerable extent. His concepts have also been taken further by Bowman.

Publications

• "The Resource-Based Theory of Competitive Advantage", Californian Management Review, 33 (3): 114–135, 1991 .
• Contemporary Strategy Analysis, London: Blackwell, 2007, ISBN 1-4051-6309-7 .

References