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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:
- Combine evolved components to create higher-order activities in uncharted territory
- Find efficiencies by breaking costly dependencies within value chains
- 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
- Honesty is foundational - acknowledge actual competitive position
- Expand possibilities, don't reduce them
- Evolution creates context-specific requirements for purchasing, accounting, methodology
- Maps' primary value is facilitating strategic discourse and post-action review
- Policy shapes outcomes as powerfully as technology
- Inertia is dual-edged: prevents premature industrialization but catastrophic when ignored during actual transitions