Source: istockpictures.com
Revisited and extended from an original article I wrote on 29 April 2016.
Sun Tzu… Greenfields… Blue Oceans… or the 'Apex Strategy' Extended and Revisited from an original article I wrote on 29 April 2016. The mildest passion for history – in particular economic and military history – lends itself to stories of travellers, merchants and warriors alike finding themselves in faraway lands challenged by new ideas and new concepts. And the uncanny crossroads at which militarism and mercantilism meet can be traced to one fundamental concept – strategy.
Every game needs a game plan. Every battle needs a strategy. Every business needs just the same. Just as Sun Tzu's Art of War and its ancient ideas of the 5th Century B.C. at the time was thought to be exclusively a military doctrine, it not only stood the two and half thousand year test of time, but its powerful yet seemingly simplistic inquiries into the natural world and the human condition, gave its readers insights into business strategy that are still used in the world today. The notions of presenting oneself as larger than in actual fact, the idea of attacking (or in business transacting) at a point of power using force multipliers, such as location, time of day, as well as engaging when you are outnumbering a counterparty, all speak to using advantageous factors at the right time and in the right way to turn a situation in one’s favour. There is a reason why Sun Tzu’s Art of War is used in business.
Now I won't venture into examinations of Greenfields or Blue Ocean strategies, other than to say that these concepts have emerged in the turn of the century as valiant challengers to the status quo, advocating organic growth in the case of Greenfields, or using innovation and product differentiation to move into 'blue ocean' space.’ These are counterstrategies to using acquisitions or more conservative or contemporary approaches established over time from government-backed or institutionally funded “large” players dominating with critical mass. These approaches have in part been upended from the scalability and rapid critical mass created from technology.
Toying with both the ancient readings of Sun Tzu and more recent ideas behind Greenfields and blue oceans, leave scope for further thought on the topic of strategy. I would coin a notion akin to Apex Predation – the ascension by a species in an ecosystem to the peak or 'apex' of its food chain. This same concept that exists in nature, may be seen in business, in economy, and in society. In this regard the Apex concept extends the Have and have not terminology I have used in recent writing – that the Apex player in the equation is the person who attains or aims to attain that “Have” position.
It is evident therefore that the “Have Nots” are clearly the people who do not have that Apex or Alpha psyche. In the same way that green fields are attained by building strength and superiority through organic growth, and blue oceans are reached by innovation, strands of these strategies coalesce and find a common ground in putting a brand, a product, and/or business in the position of market leader – a proverbial apex predator will attain primacy and hold it in their respective markets.
Therefore, it is possible to draw similarities between the idea of competitive advantage expounded by the natural world with that of the business and professional world in which civilised society has built up. Or put another way, societal constructs allow us to escape our visceral instincts on so much. Sooner or later nature catches up with us. And therein lies the opportunities for a business.
There is a paucity of scholarly or mainstream discussion on the link between nature and business, and this is to me unsurprising. The majority of people live in urban or suburban environments, and this is the case in any first world nation and many developing ones as well. But the notion of an Apex Strategy requires little imagination, even for someone who has lived in the city all their lives.
Taking from nature the idea of being 'first' or number one is born from a survival instinct. This has seen itself manifested in all the great empires throughout history, from Ancients Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Ayyubid, Frankish, Angevin, Holy Roman, Mongol, Ottoman, British, American and Chinese. No doubt I have missed a few along the way, but they all have in common that aspiration to be the number one at one or more areas – the Apex Predator.
This concept that is prevalent in the military, geo-political context is equally co-existent in the business world. Whether it was the East India Company concept, where first the Dutch East India Company was the most prominent and competition, by all sorts of means, the British East India Company was one of the first modern (albeit mercantilist and government-backed) corporation that rose to primacy throughout the late 18th and 19th Centuries. These were followed by the American Corporation Era as part of its first industrial era and saw the rise of Carnegie (Now U.S. Steel), John Pierpont Morgan, the Rockefeller dynasty to name a few. The idea for these businesses was to be number one.
The natural world creates this need to be number one out of survival. It is a very binary equation. Either you survive or you don’t. The great technological and economic success across the world over the 19th and 20th century has meant that survival for subsistence is no longer necessary and excess wealth and production has given greater footing to social support being provided by the excess production.
The problem with this insofar as the natural equations of survival and Apex predation is that at the very least in theory, becoming and remaining the Apex predator means continual destroying external threats to that position. For example, Microsoft and Amazon ensure that they control as much of their respective supply chains as possible, and they also use their gargantuan size to manipulate governments across jurisdictions to ensure that the laws and regulations are favourable to them and prevent new, smaller players competing with them. In this regard, government is complicit in artificially securing Apex Predators in their markets.
In a truly natural business environment, the Apex Predator would change over time because no business can retain its brand life cycle, its leadership, its productivity in perpetuity. The universe, of which the natural world on Earth is a part of, is constantly changing and the business environment reflects that. Governments distort this through the regulation and control of currencies, money markets, capital flows, as well as the plethora of social and business regulations, registrations, licenses, fees, industrial awareds, tribunals, courts, and every other mechanism of government which irrespective of any alleged good-intent serves primarily and dominantly to distort the primal notions of nature, namely: for everyone to compete to be number one.
Now the counterargument is that not everyone wants to be number one. We can recall from our school days there were always the Alpha Males, and equally Females who would compete in everything to be number one, more so in the sporting context, but also in the academic and social context as well, and there was always a spectrum and at the other end of the spectrum were the uncool kids, the non-sporty kids, who did not want to study, did not want to be number one. Note that no one person fit into every category at the bottom of the scale. Even the least competitive kid, usually the most pathetic, had a monopoly on the entertainment value and leveraged their competitive advantage in that space.
Perhaps in nature, the more brutal scenario would be that the weakest would die off, and whilst this article is not suggesting that a civilised society conducts itself in that way, it can’t but help be noticed that every policy toward authoritarian or totalitarian ideals, from abortion to the Population Control Agenda created by the United Nations in the early 2000s in a sense presents an artificial mechanism of picking and choosing the future of society. Strangely, sooner or later nature still comes in and takes control of those who would assume to play god and have that power for themselves.
I intend to venture further into this notion of Apex Predation Strategy or 'Apex Strategy' at. a later point as I see potential connection to the concept of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand. I believe underneath the surface, a strategic and tactical shift away from a superficial approach of merely being a “market leader" or “innovating" as a means of branding, but genuinely building internal systems which support leadership in its staff, a culture of not just innovating for the sake of innovating, but innovating to improve the way in which business is done, in the way the world works, to the very core of cultures and attitudes – with an intent to survival.
The conclusions are firstly, there is a connection that the apex or alpha instinct is a survival instinct which in the professional or business context leads to or even forces adaptation (innovation) and this continual and constant process leads to primacy in any area that the alpha applies themselves. Secondly, the above equation will exist in any natural environment, irrespective of the level of government or forced control by any individual or group of individuals, and that the more this is forced upon people, the more the human condition, or rather nature will impose itself to override any artificial relationships, conditions or systems imposed by government or political will. Thirdly, and finally, any system whether adapted or appropriated in the manner described above, will revert back to a fluid equilibrium which is constantly changing over time. Meaning that there will always be an alpha or apex predator in the position of the “have" and that will always be changing. These are all conclusions open to further inquiry in the future.