Strategy is the organized deployment of resources to achieve specific objectives, something that business and warfare have in common.
In the 1980s business strategists realized that there was a vast knowledge base stretching back thousands of years that they had barely examined.
In regard to what business strategists call "first-mover advantage", Sun Tzu said: "Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits an enemy is at ease, he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary."
[3] In an early description of business military strategy, Quinn claims that an effective strategy: "first probes and withdraws to determine opponents' strengths, forces opponents to stretch their commitments, then concentrates resources, attacks a clear exposure, overwhelms a selected market segment, builds a bridgehead in that market, and then regroups and expands from that base to dominate a wider field."
Today, most business strategists stress that considerable synergies and competitive advantages can be gained from collaboration, partnering, and co-operation.
Finally, a recent contribution to understanding and using marketing warfare strategies is the visual business war game proposed by S.