Judo Strategy is:
• The mind set of not opposing strength to strength
• Three Principles of competition: movement, balance, and leverage
• A toolbox of tactics and techniques
Use Judo Strategy if:
• You’re a small player facing off against stronger competitors
• You’re a large player moving into areas where powerful opponents may already be entrenched.
• You have the capabilities(speed, agility, and creativity) to outmaneuver your opponents, no matter what the balance of strength may be.
Use Judo Strategy when:
• Dealing with the competition is one of your top strategic priorities
• Competitors have the advantage of strength and size.
• You’re unlikely to win by going head to head.
Judo Principles
• Movement o Don’t invite attack-“The Puppy Dog Ploy”
 Keep a low profile and avoid giving away your game
 Position alongside competitors instead of attacking head on.
 Don’t moon the giant – unless you want to lose. o Define the competitive space
 Change the paradigm by redefining standards for the market
 Segment the market and make focus the key to success
 Use first-mover advantage to build a market where you choose the rules o Follow Through Fast
 Stay focused and sequence growth to avoid becoming overextended
 Make maintaining internal alignment an early priority – before the challenges of growth emerge.
 Use partnerships to leverage resources beyond your immediate control.
• Balance o Grip your opponent
 Design joint ventures and equity deals to co-opt or deflect the competition.
 Sell your services to opponent in order to stop them from developing competing capabilities on their own.
 Partner with (potential) opponents to strengthen your position in future competition while taking current or future rivals out of the game. o Avoid Tit for Tat
 Avoid escalatory moves that can drag you into a war of attrition or a multifront war
 Study competitors carefully and copy only their most compelling ideas
 Remain on the offensive, even when responding to attack, by using tactics that play to your strengths o Push when pulled
 Find ways that allow you to use your competitor’s moves to your advantage
 Take the force out of your competitor’s attack by building on his products, services, and technology, if you can.
 Don’t fight losing battles: conserve your energies, fold your position, and return to the fight.
• Leverage o Leverage your opponent’s assets
 Turn assets into hostages by forcing your opponents to cannibalize their own strengths in order to respond to your attack.
 Turn assets into handicaps that make it difficult for your opponents to compete, even after cannibalization has taken place
 Execute, execute, execute – leverage is necessary but not sufficient to win. o Leverage your opponent’s partners
 Out- partner your opponents by showing other companies that they can do better by working with you.
 Play on your opponent’ partners’ weaknesses in order to make it difficult for competitors to respond.
 Divide and conquer: force your opponents into unpleasant choices by pitting them against their partners. o Leverage your opponent’s competitors
 Add value to your opponent’s competitors’ products.
 Create critical mass by building coalitions with your opponents’ competitors.
 Provide a distribution channel for your opponents’ competitors’ products and services.
Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky – Mastering Movement at Palm Computing
• Movement at Palm: Define the competitive space o The Challenge: You’re up against powerful opponents who have spent many years developing successful strategies and techniques. o The Solution: Define the competitive space in a way that gives you the advantage by making it difficult for your competitors to compete.
• Redefine product standards to make success depend less on resources and more on skill.
• Create new business models that run counter to your competitors’ established style of play.
• Movement at Palm: The Puppy Dog Ploy o The challenge: As you build a position in the market, you risk drawing the attention of more powerful competitors. o The solution: Try to look unthreatening in order to avert a full scale attack.
• Build an initial position by appealing to thought leaders and early adopters, rather than attacking the mass-market head on.
• Position alongside your competitors’ products by showing how they can coexist.
• Avoid threatening your opponent’s core business before you’re strong enough to fight.
• Movement at Palm: Follow through fast o The challenge: You’ve built a healthy lead over the competition : what next? o The solution: Use this window of opportunity to build the strongest position you can.
• Streamline internal processes in order to continue upgrading your products or services at a rapid pace.
• Don’t be greedy, especially in industries where network effects play an important role. Price aggressively in order to win market share and build a large installed base.
• Movement at Palm:Follow through fast o The challenge: As you become more successful, you face constant temptations to extend your products and your brand. o The solution: Stay focused. Overextending your resources is a fast path to slow growth.
• Initially, choose only complementary projects that don’t over-tax your core resources.
• Carefully broaden your scope as the company scales and management bandwidth expands.
• Balance at Palm: Avoid Tit-for-Tat o The challenge: Despite your best efforts to stay out of harm’s way, your opponent launches a head on attack. o The solution: Avoid getting pushed onto the defensive by trying to counter all of your competitor’s moves.
• Stay on the offensive by continuing to define the competitive space.
• Play your game (not theirs) and maintain your status as a leader.
• Carefully asses your competitor’s initiatives and match only the most compelling ideas.
Rob Glaser: Maintaining Balance at RealNetworks
• Movement at Realnetworks: Follow Through Fast o The challenge: You’re first to market, but competitors are already on the move. o The solution: Make the most of your first-mover advantage by building and, if possible, locking in a massive installed base o Make market share, not revenue, your immediate goal – especially in industries where network effects play an important role. o Invest in processes, such as automatic updating, that tie you closely to your customer base. o Innovate constantly – don’t get blindsided by a competitor with the latest technology
• Balance at Realnetworks: Grip your opponent o The challenge: You’ve built a strong initial position, but powerful competitors loom on the horizon. o The solution: Build relationships that weaken your competitors’ positions while strengthening your own.
• Grip competitors by tapping them as a distribution channel and turning their customers into your own.
• Grip competitors by working on common technology standards – which will limit their room to maneuver if they decide to attack.
• Balance at Realnetworks: Grip your opponent o The challenge: Your intelligence tells you that your largest competitor is preparing to go up against you head to head. o The solution: Keep your opponent close in order to reduce his incentive to attack and reduce the force he can put behind a blow.
• Co-opt your opponent, if possible, by giving him a stake in your success.
• Reduce your opponent’s room to maneuver by making him dependent upon something only you can supply.
• Keep your options open and maintain your freedom of movement.
• Balance at Realnetworks: Push when Pulled o The challenge: In addition to attacks from larger competitors, you constantly face challenges from new technologies and start up companies. o The solution: Embrace alternative technologies and use their momentum to your advantage.
• Commoditize new technologies and make distinctive value added features the basis of competition.
• Be inclusive rather than exclusive, making your products the default choice.
• Balance at Realnetworks: Avoid Tit for Tat o The challenge: Your biggest competitor offers all of the products you sell for free. o The solution: Rather than respond in kind, shift the terms of competition to play to your strengths.
• Contain your opponent’s attack by selectively matching his most compelling and easily neutralized moves – giving away products at the lower end of the market, for example.
• Create and use assets, such as unique content delivery vehicles, that your opponent lacks.
Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie: Maximizing Leverage at CNET Networks
• Movement at CNET: Follow Through Fast o The challenge: Your competitors dominate the business – how do you get known? o The solution: Invest aggressively in newer ( and cheaper) channels that you rivals are likely to ignore.
• Bet on distribution channels that are too small or too risky for your competitors.
• Lock in partners with exclusive deals before other companies have a chance to react
 Leverage at CNET: Leverage your Opponent’s Assets o The challenge: Your competitors have some of the best known brands in the industry – how do you compete? o The solution: Create new brands that uniquely leverage the new medium and confront your competitors’ with a dilemma: whether to ignore your move or to match and undermine their existing brands.
 Leverage at CNET: Leverage your Opponent’s Assets o The Challenge: Your competitors have revenue streams and profits that far outstrip your own. o The solution: Design a strategy that turns your competitors’ desire to maintain their profitability into a brake on their ability to respond
• Invest in activities that force your competitors to cannibalize their assets or business models in order to counter your moves.
• Redefine the market in a way that requires your competitors to choose between losing their existing customers and losing overall share.
• More broadly, leverage the expectations created by your own competitors’ past strength by forcing them to choose between profits and growth.
 Leverage at CNET: Leverage your opponent’s competitors o The challenge: You face well-entrenched competitors that have been locked in rivalry for many years. o The solution: Exploit the competition between your competitors by cooperating with one or all – even unilaterally – in ways that enhance your product or service. This is a strategy that rivals of long standing are unlikely to match in kind.
 Leverage at CNET: Leverage your opponent’s partners o The challenge: Your competitors have long-standing relationships with important partners – how do you horn in? o The solution: Challenge the status quo.
• Sharpen the conflict among the interests of the various constituencies that your competitors need to reach.
• Find new ways of working with partners that put your competitors’ fundamental values or revenue models at stake.
 Balance at CNET: Avoid Tit for Tat o The challenge: Larger opponents broaden their attack by moving into new markets adjacent to your business. o The solution: Stay focused on your core business in the absence of significant, provable economies of scope.
• Avoid being pushed “off-strategy”, especially when competitors are attacking in new terrain.
• Constantly track your activities for strategic fit – and be willing to divest peripheral business that don’t strongly reinforce the core.
Sumo Strategy
• Use aggressive pricing signals to deter the faint of heart.
• Use aggressive capacity signals to prevent weaker players from expanding.
• Use fear, uncertainty and doubt to keep risk-averse customers and partners in the fold.
Sumo Strategy: Lock ‘em up
• Outspend smaller opponents, putting them on a treadmill to defeat.
• Lock up partners, denying competitors access to critical resources.
• Provoke weaker competitors into wars of attrition or tit-for-tat.
Master the Rules
• Learn the rules – and realize that as you grow, they change.
• Embed antitrust compliance in your organization’s “body memory” through repeated training, role-playing, and drills.
• Sweat the small stuff – when it comes to mastering the rules, the 80/20 rule doesn’t apply.
Five rules to becoming a better Judo Strategist
• Rule One: Maintain a deep focus on your core business
• Rule Two: Stay on the offensive but avoid frontal assaults
• Rule Three: Plan and be prepared to pivot
• Rule Four: Look for leverage in the strangest places
• Rule Five: Face the Music