For close to half a century, the U.S. army focused the vast majority of its planning and resources on being prepared to face the gigantic, well-equipped, highly trained and monolithic military forces of the then Soviet Union.  But suddenly in the late 1980s, communism fell and the threat changed. Now the enemy could be any of dozens of small countries, or factions within countries, and the conflict is more likely to be a relatively constrained set of battles, or even a police action, than all-out war.

If a business strategy will be capability based, it will not be shaped on the assumption that it has a clearly identified set of competitors who could be expected to behave in conflict in a fairly understandable fashion. Rather, it must be one that acts faster, hits harder and is more versatile and most familiar with business complexity.

                  David Freedman’s CORPS BUSINESS