Guerilla actions as small business strategy: out-witting is more competitively responsive than out-spending.
Entrepreneurial Executive › Nbr. 12, January 2007
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Guerilla actions as small business strategy: out-witting is more competitively responsive than out-spending.
ABSTRACT
Small and medium-sized firms face disadvantages in the dynamic global market place today. The authors suggest that "fast cycle decision making"--the application of Col. John Boyd's OODA Loop philosophy can create economic advantages that will allow the smaller firm to aggressively compete against much larger rivals. Fast cycle decision making suggests deception, rapid response and being able to "turn inside" your opponent's decision cycle. It is of interest to note that this version of guerilla warfare is now embodied in the United States Marine Corp's new doctrine of Maneuver Warfare. INTRODUCTION Erich Fromm in his seminal work Man for Himself (1947) posited the following on the nature and character of man. He writes, "Reason, man's blessing, is also his curse; it forces him to cope everlasting with the task of solving the insoluble. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, and that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape." General Gordon Sullivan, former Army Chief of Staff, suggests in his book Hope is Not a Method, that "the essential character of strategy is that it relates ends to means" (Gordon and Harper, 1996). Finally, it is often reported that Sun Tzu in the Art of War claimed that "all strategy is based on deception, with the expert approaching his objective indirectly." The authors of ...See the full content of this document
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