OutManeuver: OutThink-Don't OutSpend

Look at any industry, in any market, and you'll find the same attrition strategy playing out everywhere. Companies compete with one another in a mindless race to the bottom, matching feature for feature, which commoditizes markets and drives down prices and margins. Ultimately, no one wins-not even the consumer, as quality, service, and differentiation suffer. Yet there is another way: maneuver strategy. Maneuver relies on speed, agility, insight, and innovation to win the most in any market at the least possible cost. Unlike attrition, maneuver never seeks to attack an incumbent in head-to-head competition. Instead, maneuver uses reconnaissance and insights to identify weaknesses and uses three strategies (preemption, dislocation, and disruption) to attack those vulnerabilities. Using speed and agility, a maneuver strategist wins new spaces before competitors become aware of the opportunity or disrupts the well-laid plans and efficient operations of competitors. As the pace of change accelerates, as speed and agility become more important than size and strength, as new entrants disrupt existing markets, attrition strategy seems outdated. Maneuver strategy, with its focus on speed, agility, and innovation, is the right strategy for the new emerging markets.

Alex and I wrote this book because we are convinced that attrition strategy, which has dominated corporate thinking for close to 100 years, is reaching its logical end of life, and should be replaced by, or at least balanced with, maneuver strategy.

Attrition is direct, confrontational and requires little, if any, strategic thinking. Attrition seeks the annihilation of a competitor almost regardless of the cost or tangential damage. When markets were relatively static, it made sense to gain scale and compete head to head. As markets are less static, change is frequent and unexpected and technology allows any firm to compete, speed and agility become more important than size. Rupert Murdoch said it best when he said that "..big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."
Maneuver demands better insight, careful analysis, rapid execution, nimbleness and the ability to innovate new products and services to meet evolving market needs. If we consider how competition, markets and consumer demand is changing, it's fairly easy to see that speed, agility and innovation are what customers demand.