In the early years of his investing career, Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) was an advocate of a pure Ben Graham value investing approach. That meant that he bought companies that were cheap, but not necessarily great businesses.
Later in his career with the influence of Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio), Buffett moved toward an approach that meshed buying inexpensive companies with buying companies that had strong, durable competitive advantages.
Although these great companies often didn't look as cheap, their ability to compound capital at extremely high rates for long periods of time turned higher valuations into bargains.
This combining of value and growth is explored in the following "Talk at Google." (GOOG, Financial) (GOOGL, Financial).
