Dimanche 10 décembre 2006
We always assume that to win you will have to beat your competitors once and for good. However, this first stratagem explains that you’re better off letting an opponent escape. Trying o beat a surrounded opponent is costly as he doesn’t have anything to lose anymore and therefore will battle fiercely. A defeated opponent will look for revenge but one that submits voluntarily can become useful. As mentioned in the book; “to capture a heart, let it go seven times.”
This chapter uses different example to describe that. One of them is the competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi being helpful to each others by innovating all the time to try to gain market share. By doing so, each one of them copies on each others innovation and thus increasing competitiveness and reducing costs. The second example is the war between the Shu and Menghou. Shu capture many time Menghou until he decided to surrendered by himself. Once he surrounded the Shu asked him to become the chief of that region. One of the Shu advisors then asked the emperor why he would let him rule this area and the emperor answered him that it would be easier for him to get allegiance from the local than it would be for the emperor himself.
The polarity principle implies that optimal success depends on our competitor’s success, or at least its continued existence. (Kaihan Krippendorff)
Dimanche 10 décembre 2006
This seems a rather obvious strategy that everyone and every company try to use. A classical; buy low sell high. But in essence this stratagem is more complex than this and is based on two factors, “value is relative” and “we confuse what we value with what others value”. The idea is to give something on which you place little value and to get something from him on which you place a higher value.
For example when you’re buying an Ipod, the real value for Mac is not the Ipod they sell you but rather the long term relation they are creating with you and from you. The Ipod is a bit like a Trojan horse in your pocket; you start listening to music and then start using Itunes to download music then get familiar with Mac and thus are more likely to one of their computer than before… So at the end of the day the Ipod is great (in Macintosh view) not only for itself but also for all it brings to the company. We are actually the “fools” giving the jade in exchange for the brick.
It is the principle of polarity; accepting good with bad or short term loss for long term gain.
Dimanche 10 décembre 2006
This stratagem is slightly conflicting with the first one as it proposes to surround the adversaries in an appropriate place (where you’ll have the advantage of knowing the field) and then win over them.
In order to do so, you force your adversary to enter your area of control then you cut his escape route this will have the effect of encouraging you troops and disadvantage you opponent.
In order to describe this technique, the written uses the example of Microsoft creating Encarta forcing Britannica to enter the encyclopaedia on software market (a market which they had no idea about) putting them in a unstable position and thus weakening them.
