Michael Porter wasn’t trying to invent benchmarking but he accidentally made it unavoidable

Harvard’s Michael Porter is the godfather of strategy. Competitive advantage. Five forces. The value chain. Every accountant has heard the buzzwords… but here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Most firms read Porter, nod wisely — and then keep giving clients average numbers.

Porter would absolutely hate that. His whole message was simple:

Competitive advantage happens when you break down the business and compare each part to the best in the market — not the average.

When Porter mapped the value chain, he gave us a blueprint for real benchmarking:

• Where are we inefficient?
• Where are others outperforming us?
• Where is the margin actually being created?
• And where are we bleeding profit without knowing it?

Porter wasn’t writing about benchmarking, but he made proper benchmarking inevitable.
Once you can see the activities inside the business, the next logical step is to compare them — honestly, brutally, and against the right standard.

And that’s where most accountants still get it wrong.

They compare to the industry average — the very benchmark Porter would call strategically meaningless. Because the average operator isn’t winning. The average operator barely survives.

If we want clients to build competitive advantage, we need to stop benchmarking to mediocrity — and start benchmarking to the top 20%.