# Chapter 19: On Playing Chess

## Core Focus

Foundational strategic principles using Wardley Maps. Strategy = understanding landscapes, honest self-assessment, deliberate resource allocation.

## Stepping Stones

Effective strategy creates "stepping stones that expand future possibilities" rather than gambling. Three methods for map-based advantage identification:
1. Combine evolved components to create higher-order activities in uncharted territory
2. Find efficiencies by breaking costly dependencies within value chains
3. Identify components approaching commodity despite market inertia

Key distinction: opportunities expand future options; gambling narrows them. "Just because you could do something doesn't mean you should."

## Policy Over Technology

Strategic advantage doesn't always require technology. Pharmaceutical supply chain example: address opacity through policy mechanisms (opening regulatory systems, public transparency campaigns) rather than technology mandates.

## Capital Evolution and Purchasing Context

"Stocks" of capital (activities, practices, data, knowledge) evolve through stages. Evolution transforms assets into liabilities. Purchasing must align with evolutionary position:

- **Uncharted/novel**: venture capital or time-and-materials
- **Developing**: outcome-based contracts with targets
- **Established product**: commercial off-the-shelf
- **Industrialized**: unit or utility-based pricing

Challenges traditional accounting which treats capital as static.

## Key Examples

**Fotango**: mapping identified infrastructure would become a constraint, leading to strategic pivot toward cloud. Analysis was sound; parent company politics killed it.

**Stewart Butterfield's pivots**: failed game (Ludicorp) -> Flickr -> failed game (Tiny Speck) -> Slack. Success through flexible repositioning, not singular focus.

**Regulatory mapping**: how regulators can map stakeholder needs and capital flows to identify policy levers.

## Key Takeaways

1. Honesty is foundational - acknowledge actual competitive position
2. Expand possibilities, don't reduce them
3. Evolution creates context-specific requirements for purchasing, accounting, methodology
4. Maps' primary value is facilitating strategic discourse and post-action review
5. Policy shapes outcomes as powerfully as technology
6. Inertia is dual-edged: prevents premature industrialization but catastrophic when ignored during actual transitions