Porter said it, word for word — in a Fast Company interview published 28 February 2001, where he told Keith H. Hammonds: “Of course strategy is hard — it’s about making tough choices.” The footnote everyone attaches is the wrong one: the line is not in his 1996 Harvard Business Review article “What Is Strategy?”, whose full text does not contain the sentence.
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different” Michael Porter, interviewed by Keith H. Hammonds, "Michael Porter's Big Ideas," Fast Company no. 44 (March 2001): 150. Commonly miscited to his Harvard Business Review article "What Is Strategy?" (November–December 1996), which does not contain the sentence. Verified 25 Aug 2026 by Quotle.info.
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Provenance
The interview everyone skips
Actually from
Keith H. Hammonds, “Michael Porter’s Big Ideas”, Fast Company, issue 44 (March 2001), p. 150
Published online
28 February 2001 — Porter speaking in his own words, in a series of interviews
Usually cited as
“What Is Strategy?”, Harvard Business Review, Nov–Dec 1996 — the wrong footnote
Checked against
HBR Reprint 96608, complete article text — sentence not present
What that article does say
“Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.”
Of course strategy is hard — it’s about making tough choices. There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different. Operational effectiveness is about things that you really shouldn’t have to make choices on; it’s about what’s good for everybody and about what every business should be doing.
Right words, wrong footnote
Porter’s own answer, as printed in Fast Company in March 2001. Its conversational register — “things that you really shouldn’t have to make choices on” — is the tell: this is speech, not the published essay. Wikiquote ↗ and Lib Quotes ↗ both reproduce the passage but file it under Porter’s 1996 Harvard Business Review article, which does not contain it.
Every popular version of the line is credited to the same place: Porter’s “What Is Strategy?” in the November–December 1996 Harvard Business Review. Wikiquote ↗ files it under exactly that heading, and Lib Quotes ↗ prints the fuller passage with the same citation.
The article itself rules that out. Searching the complete text of HBR Reprint 96608 ↗ turns up “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do” and “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value” — but not the trade-offs sentence, and not the words “everybody” or “shouldn’t” anywhere in the piece. HBR’s own page ↗ for the article shows no such line either.
The wording’s spoken texture points at an interview rather than an essay — and that is exactly where it is. Keith H. Hammonds’s “Michael Porter’s Big Ideas” ↗ ran in Fast Company issue 44, March 2001, from page 150, and online on 28 February 2001. The live page is now behind a bot wall, but the archived full text ↗ carries the passage verbatim, in Porter’s own first-person answer: “Of course strategy is hard — it’s about making tough choices. There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”
So the words are genuine and the speaker is right; only the footnote is wrong. The aggregators are no help in spotting that: BrainyQuote ↗ gives the line a name and a birth date and nothing else, and business-blog compilations such as Tren Griffin’s 2013 Porter list ↗ quote it, and the operational-effectiveness sentence beside it, with no citation of any kind.
This wording was first published in Fast Company issue 44 (March 2001) and is under copyright to its publisher, Mansueto Ventures. It is quoted here for identification and commentary; the interview itself remains protected. For commercial or published reuse, get permission from the rightsholder. (The 1996 “What Is Strategy?” ↗ article the line is usually credited to is separately in copyright to Harvard Business School Publishing — but it is not the source of this sentence.)
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The name is right. The footnote isn't.
Porter said this, and we can show you where: a Fast Company interview published in March 2001. What is wrong is the citation everyone repeats — every version of the quotation carries the same 1996 source, and that source does not contain the sentence.
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The cited article“What Is Strategy?”, Harvard Business Review, Nov–Dec 1996 Does not contain it
The complete text of the reprint makes the same argument in different words: “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.” The popular sentence appears nowhere in it — read the full article ↗.
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The reference workWikiquote Filed as sourced
Wikiquote ↗ groups the line under its “What is strategy?,” 1996 heading. The other two quotations in that group really are in the article; this one is not, and it is also the entry Wikiquote leaves without a page number — the neighbouring “essence of strategy” line is pinned to p. 70.
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The aggregatorsBrainyQuote, Lib Quotes No source, or the wrong one
BrainyQuote ↗ runs the sentence with a name and a birth date and no citation at all; Lib Quotes ↗ supplies the fuller passage and repeats the 1996 Harvard Business Review citation.
✓Porter said the famous sentence to Fast Company, not in Harvard Business Review: it is in Keith H. Hammonds’s interview “Michael Porter’s Big Ideas”, issue 44, March 2001, p. 150 — read the archived full text ↗. What he wrote in the 1996 essay everyone points at is the tighter cousin of it: “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value” — HBR Reprint 96608 ↗.
Context
Why the distinction mattered
Porter’s 1996 argument had a target: the management-tools boom of the early 1990s. Total quality management, benchmarking, re-engineering and outsourcing had taught a generation of executives to chase best practice — and Porter’s complaint was that best practice, by definition, is what everyone else is also copying. In the article he calls the result “zero-sum competition, static or declining prices, and pressures on costs that compromise companies’ ability to invest in the business for the long term.”
Five years later, sitting down with Fast Company, Porter put the same argument in conversational shorthand: operational effectiveness is the stuff nobody has to choose between, and strategy is the stuff you do have to choose between. That is the sentence that got famous — and because it summarises the 1996 essay so neatly, it drifted into being cited as though it came from it.
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
What the 1996 article actually says
The article is built in four numbered movements: Operational Effectiveness Is Not Strategy; Strategy Rests on Unique Activities; A Sustainable Strategic Position Requires Trade-offs; and Fit Drives Both Competitive Advantage and Sustainability.
Two of the three lines Wikiquote files under that article do appear in it, word for word: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do” and “The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few – and integrating among them.” The famous trade-offs sentence is the odd one out — it belongs to the 2001 interview instead.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 23 May 1947 · American economist and Harvard Business School strategy professor
Michael Eugene Porter is an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School, best known for the five forces framework and for the books Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985). His 1996 Harvard Business Review essay “What Is Strategy?” is the article most often quoted for the idea that strategy is a set of deliberate trade-offs rather than a race to adopt best practice. He founded and leads Harvard’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available citation
Keith H. Hammonds, “Michael Porter’s Big Ideas,” Fast Company, no. 44 (March 2001): 150 — Porter speaking in interview; published online 28 February 2001. Note: this line is routinely credited instead to Michael E. Porter, “What Is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review 74, no. 6 (November–December 1996): 61–78, whose full text (HBR Reprint 96608) does not contain it.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/strategy-is-about-making-choices-trade-offs-its-about/