Art of War and Gaming Theory

I came up with the name Triad Strategic Services a bunch of years ago, after reading Sun Tsu's “Art of War”. I was reminded of this recently, while listening to a lecture for a course I'm taking on Game Theory from Cornell. At its core, Game Theory explains the connection between Competitive Intelligence and Strategy Planning. You have to understand your competition completely before planning your strategy because every move they make can impact you in one way or another. Or as my good buddy Sun once said,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

So the Triad, in Triad Strategic Services, derives from these key questions;

1- What do my rivals want? What motivates them?
2- What are my rivals capabilities? What resources do they have?
3- What do my rivals believe they can do?

We do not exist in a vacuum. By anticipating potential moves of our competition, and having a planned response or a proactive/preemptive move in place, we can be the authors of the next chapter, rather than being helpless bystanders. The danger in all of this is bias.

When you have worked in an industry for a long time, you start to feel like you know the players really well. You've seen a situation play out many times and you know what is going to happen next. This bias needs to be challenged from time to time. New leadership, new technology, new ambitions... can all change the way your competition is going to act in a situation.

If you only rely on what you assume will happen based on history instead of forward-looking insights, your strategy isn't strategic at all.