Judo Strategy: Turning Your Competitors' Strength to Your Advantage

Rating:
Summary: Your rivals can be toppled by their own commitments
Review: I read dozens of business books every year, and this one is a standout. In clear compelling language, Yoffie and Kwak lay out a set of strategic principles and techniques that companies can use to fight back against stronger competitors. The three principles they analyze are movement, balance, and leverage; the techniques include the puppy dog ploy, define the competitive space, and leverage your opponent's assets, partners, and competitors. These ideas come originally from the sport of judo, but Yoffie and Kwak demonstrate through numerous examples that they also make sense in business.

As well as short examples from Intuit, eBay, Schwab, etc. that are used to explain the three principles, the book includes indepth studies of three companies that have been successful at judo strategy (Palm, Real Networks, and CNET). These chapters are a "must read" for anyone interested in the new economy. A great deal has been written about all three companies (especially Palm), but here the analysis and details, often culled from interviews, are first-rate.

The last section of the book deals with sumo strategy, which is the counterpart to judo for large companies such as Microsoft and Intel. Smaller companies will find few direct lessons here, but reading about sumo strategy is a good wake-up call for anyone who thought that competing with giants might be easy.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: I read dozens of business books every year, and this one is a standout. In clear compelling language, Yoffie and Kwak lay out a set of strategic principles and techniques that companies can use to fight back against stronger competitors. The three principles they analyze are movement, balance, and leverage; the techniques include the puppy dog ploy, define the competitive space, and leverage your opponent's assets, partners, and competitors. These ideas come originally from the sport of judo, but Yoffie and Kwak demonstrate through numerous examples that they also make sense in business.

As well as short examples from Intuit, eBay, Schwab, etc. that are used to explain the three principles, the book includes indepth studies of three companies that have been successful at judo strategy (Palm, Real Networks, and CNET). These chapters are a "must read" for anyone interested in the new economy. A great deal has been written about all three companies (especially Palm), but here the analysis and details, often culled from interviews, are first-rate.

The last section of the book deals with sumo strategy, which is the counterpart to judo for large companies such as Microsoft and Intel. Smaller companies will find few direct lessons here, but reading about sumo strategy is a good wake-up call for anyone who thought that competing with giants might be easy.

Rating:
Summary: Clever analogy with great insights
Review: In their Preface, Yoffie and Kwak explain that their book "is built on two broad metaphors that we hope readers will find compelling in thinking about the strategic challenges their businesses face. Our primary metaphor comes from the sport of judo, which originated in late nineteenth-century Japan. Judo requires quickness, agility, and the ability to outmaneuver the competition. Most important, in judo, unlike many martial arts, true strength comes from turning your opponent's weight and power to your advantage." The other principal metaphor is derived from sumo wrestling (i.e. making the most of one's strength and power") which the authors concede "can be a very sensitive topic for the very large companies that are most likely to profit from" techniques which such advantages permit.

Yoffie and Kwak carefully organize their excellent material within three Parts: Principles of Judo Strategy (Chapters 1-4), Masters of Judo Strategy (Chapters 5-7), and Responding to Judo Strategy (Chapters 8 and 9). In the final chapter, they offer and then explain five "Rules" to follow when pursuing a Judo Strategy: (1) Maintain a deep focus on your core strategy, (2) Stay on the offensive but avoid frontal assaults, (3) Plan and be prepared to pivot, (4) Look for leverage in the strangest places, and (5) Face the music. While pursuing a Judo Strategy, it is also important to remember that "judo is ultimately a zero-sum game, and business, often times, is not. Moreover, in judo, you can focus solely on a single opponent, while in business, other groups, especially customers, require your attention."

Clearly, Yoffie and Kwak fully understand the parameters of relevance of the two principal metaphors. Neither is a "bullet" (silver or otherwise) which always hits the designated target. Moreover, judo strategists may well find themselves in competition with judo strategists in another organization. In that event, those who move faster, are more agile, maintain better balance, apply greater leverage, and are better able to outmaneuver the competition will prevail. One of this book's greatest benefits is derived from what the authors learned during their interviews of various "masters" of judo strategy such as Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky of Palm Computing, Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, and Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie of CNET Networks. Not all of their circumstances and experiences are necessarily relevant to each reader's. For that reason, I urge those who read this book to focus on understanding the basic principles of judo strategy, then formulate a strategy (based on those principles) which will enable their specific organization (regardless of its size or nature) to move faster, be more agile, maintain better balance, and apply greater leverage so that it will outmaneuver its own competition. Together with those whom they interviewed, Yoffie and Kwak explain HOW.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Guy Kawasaki's How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit, Adam Morgan's Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, Don Taylor and Jeanne Smalling Archer's Up Against the Wal-Marts: How Your Business Can Prosper in the Shadow of the Retail Giants, and Samuel B. Griffin's translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be the biggest to win
Review: Judo Strategy uses Judo as an analogy for competing against a larger and more powerful competitor. The Columbia Encyclopedia defines Judo as in the following way: [Judo] depends for success upon the skills of using an opponent's own weight and strength against him, thus enabling a weak or light individual to overcome a physical superior opponent.

Judo Strategy does a good job of successfully applying judo techniques to a business setting. What are these techniques (I am glad you asked)? 8~)

Judo depends on a couple of main tenets that are listed below.

Movement
Balance
Leverage

Movement is broken down into a couple of techniques such as not inviting attack, define your competitive space and following through fast. Balance techniques include gripping opponents (co-opting competitors), avoid head on conflict and pushing when pulled (e.g., accepting a competitors coupons). Leverage techniques include using an opponents assets (installed base), partners and competitors.

The authors do a nice job of providing business examples of each of these judo disciplines. The examples include Real networks, Charles Schwab, Progressive, Cnet, eBay and others.

As an additional bonus the authors include a section for companies that are sumos in a category. Sumo techniques include unnerving the opponent, and locking up an opponent (e.g., outspending, cutting of channel options). There is a nice section on sumo and anti-trust (with Intel and Microsoft as examples).

This book is a fun read and extremely useful when consider how to deal with powerful competitors.

Rating:
Summary: Even Bill Gates could learn a trick or two
Review: Okay, I'm biased about this book. After all, our story (the Palm story) is well profiled in it! But I do believe that Yoffie and Kwak have captured and articulated well some of the essential elements of our strategy. Judo Strategy gives solid advice, and is loaded with examples, for those entrepreneurs who dare to compete against industry giants. Refreshingly, it also instructs you on what NOT to do, which is sometimes even more important. I recommend this book for anybody who choses to compete with market leaders.

Rating:
Summary: Good...
Review: Several good ideas in this book on marketing strategies for smaller companies; that made the book worth reading. The author spent too much time on the discussion of Judo. The book contains some memorable phases such as "Don't moon the giant", which would have been good advice for Netscape to follow. Great discussion on how to use a large company's strengths against it.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best business book
Review: The book is very good and give the reader a broad perspective and 360 degree view of business model. It tells you how to think on another side of what we thought. Tell you the examples from the past. Even though it forces some example to be an example of the strategy, it's still good to know what we should look. I believe this is one of the best book for any business man who has 360 degree perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Your rivals can be toppled by their own commitments
Review: Yoffie & Kwak have written a terrific practical guide to winning a competitive battle against a business rival. I have used their ideas on numerous occasions in the past few months with my own strategy consulting clients and have highly recommended this book to them as well. I enjoyed the clear well-written insights from my first reading, but I am now drawn back to write this review months later as I have come to realize the general applicability of these concepts and the value I've gained from them.

On reflection, I believe the strength of their book is the judicious use of the judo metaphor. Metaphors are powerful when they get us to see familiar opportunities or threats in new ways. That is exactly what this book did for me. Moreover, the judo metaphor helped me to remember easily all the nuances of their three core principles--movement, balance, and leverage--so that I could apply them to the business situations I deal with in my everyday life. This book describes a competitive insight supported by an apt metaphor--not a metaphor accompanied by numerous business examples.

Yoffie & Kwak describe a battle plan for stealing advantage from the dominant player in an industry. Their advice for winning is not to be better, but to be smarter. I think their principles apply in any situation where the market leader has made explicit, valuable, often irreversible, commitments to the market place--to its customers, to its suppliers, to its employees, or to its alliance partners--in order to achieve its position. The strength of the leader's market position derives from these commitments. The authors recommend that we study these commitments and then use them against our rivals in order to gain competitive advantage for ourselves. The book guides one through numerous techniques for doing exactly this.

Even though their examples are largely high-tech companies, this principle is as applicable to the steel industry as it is to biotech. I appreciated, though, their numerous applications of the often very clever techniques used by the high-tech companies cited in the book. Once I saw how the principles worked in these more challenging, and sometimes, more subtle situations, I was able to extend the principles myself to other industries and to make them part of my own strategy toolkit.

Judo Strategy is one of the best strategy books I've read in the past year.