Strategy

Never let a single supplier control your destiny

Distinguish product innovations from strategy innovations to avoid blind spots

Match growth rate to resource constraints before constraints match you

Trace structural patterns across systems to reveal shared origins

Combine the advantages of small nations with the power of large ones

The law of inheritance is the most powerful lever of social transformation

Manners outweigh laws, and laws outweigh geography, in sustaining institutions

Check concentrated popular power before it becomes despotic

Solve new problems by mapping them to distant but structurally similar ones

Identify, deepen, broaden, and defend the asymmetries that give you an edge

Exploit industry transitions to seize new high ground before others adapt

Exploit rivals' inability to change; combat your own organizational decay

Engineer fit among parts to create a whole greater than the sum

Find the weakest link limiting performance and fix it first

Set targets close enough at hand to be feasible and to coordinate action

Focus force on pivotal points where small efforts produce outsized results

Detect bad strategy by spotting fluff, missing challenges, goal-as-strategy, and bad objectives

Every real strategy has three elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, action

Accept you could lose everything, then mitigate the chances that you will

Distinguish formal hierarchy from actual influence networks

Systematically isolate rivals from their support base

Three-player alliances where the kingmaker holds real power

Work backward from success and failure to plan the path

Map possible futures and weight them by probability before deciding

Make better high-stakes decisions by using fewer variables, not more

Having the necessary conditions doesn't mean you have enough to guarantee success

Estimate the odds, update with evidence, and prepare for fat tails

Use your imagination to explore what cannot be tested in reality

A five-component strategic planning process that begins with values and noble cause, then moves t...

Business exists to advance purpose, protect people, and generate profit, in that order

The willingness to blow up your own business to advance the Cause

Choose rivals who make you better, not enemies who make you bitter

When good people do bad things and still believe they are good

A vision so compelling that people willingly sacrifice to advance it

The brain uses fundamentally different timing mechanisms for different time scales.

The ability to mentally project into past and future is humanity's ultimate superpower.

Reducing self-confidence to facilitate subordination

Comparing species to test evolutionary hypotheses

Go big or go home

Control the means

100-day plan

Deterrence can be a powerful strategy

Fighting on multiple fronts can be challenging

Unconventional tactics can be effective

Course correcting as you go

Build a wide moat

Smart once, succeed long-term

Stay smart daily

Disciplined acquisition approach

Sustainable Competitive Advantage