Task: Based on article "Curveball Strategies to Fool the Competition", Harvard Business Review
Question:
In a recent article about strategy, the following advice was offered by George Stalk, Jr. suggesting the use of strategy moves to confuse the competition for the purposes of getting the competition to "Do something dumb that they otherwise wouldn't have" or to "Not do something smart that they otherwise would have"
Specific examples included: (a) employing unfamiliar techniques, such as in sales or marketing, that traditionally were not used in this particular industry, (b) hiding the real source of your success via unlikely means such as using service forces to act as sales forces, and (c) allowing rivals to misinterpret your success because they act on a plausible and conventional, but purposely incomplete, set of assumptions about the real root cause of your success; for example squeezing costs rather than aggressively using assets.
(1) Discuss (a), (b), and (c) in terms of their being either offensive or defensive moves. Are these moves offensive, or defensive, or both? Explain and offer examples. What are some of the advantages and challenges of this approach?
(2) Do you see the opportunity to use any of Generic Strategies here, or are the generics being cloaked here to achieve this "masked intent" around an operational strategy? What impact does this have on strategy communication and execution?