Judo Strategy: Turning Your Competitors' Strength to Your Advantage

Judo, often translated as "the way of gentleness," is a century-old martial art that employs quickness and agility to help devotees overcome adversaries who seem--at least on the surface--to be more powerful. In Judo Strategy, David B. Yoffie, a professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Mary Kwak, a Harvard research associate, turn these principles around for a corporate audience, showing how they can also be used to help companies battle bigger and stronger competitors. The metaphor has been used before in business and economic examples, the authors concede, "yet no one, to our knowledge, had tried to use judo as the basis for a systematic way of thinking about strategy." In the pages that follow, they begin by delving into the three primary tenets of the discipline (movement, balance, and leverage), and show specifically how each could be applied in business. They then explore the way three prominent New Economy companies (Palm Computing, RealNetworks, and CNET Networks) have successfully put the strategy into practice. Finally, they offer insight into fending off others who employ the judo strategy. In all, an original and practical management approach. --Howard Rothman