Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Its Rules for Winning without Conflict

1. Positions and Opportunities > 3. Finding Opportunities > 1. Opportunity Basics

Which of the following best describes your level of understanding about opportunities?

1. I need to understand why economics is the basis for seeing opportunity.
   3.1 Strategic Economics

   3.1 Strategic Economics

   "Many advantages add up to victory.
   Few advantages add up to defeat."
   Sun Tzu's The Art of War 1:5:5-6

   Situation: 

   Sun Tzu's competitive strategy is based on simple economics. One of the most destructive human tendencies is our ability to mentally separate the advantages of a position from its disadvantages, its benefits from its costs. The wost aspect of this tendency making decision on the basis of benefits without concerning ourselves with costs. Sun Tzu uses positioning to avoid wars of attrition because such wars are costly and "winning" does not assure a real pay-off. Decisions have consequences and all decisions have costs. Even deciding not to act has costs, the costs of missing opportunity. Experience has shown that the most costly decisions of all are those that focus on only benefits.

   
   

2. I understand the economics, but I need understand how new opportunities are created.
   3.2 Opportunity Creation

   3.2 Opportunity Creation

   Situation: 

   Our world consists of 6 billion people constantly shifting through a rapidly changing kaleidoscope of actions, encounters, plans, and desires. Each competitive arena plays a part in this turbulent dance and cannot be separated from it. Larger and tiny opportunities are constantly arising and disappearing in this rich bubbling stew, but predicting where these opportunities will arise and where they will go seems impossible. This turbulence of change is both frightening and enticing. It threatens our current position at the same time it offers the possibility of improving it. We want to ride these changes, but they are always different, their paths seem random, and our encounters with them largely a matter of chance.

3. I understand opportunity creation, but I don't understand how my resources come into play.
   3.3 Opportunity Resources

   3.3 Opportunity Resources

   "If you are too weak to fight, you must find more men.
   In this situation, you must not act aggressively."
   Sun Tzu's The Art of War 9:6:1-2
   

   Situation: 

   There is a downside in learning to see openings. We can get sucked into situations that we should avoid. An opening has power. As Aristotle first observed, a vacuum pulls us in. How susceptible we are to this problem depends upon our character, but we all have a number of natural tendencies that create the problem. The first is known simply as wishful thinking, our tendency to make decisions based upon what it is pleasing to imagine. We also tend to over estimate our own ability to restrain ourselves. In research, this problem is known as restraint bias. This problem is amplified irrational escalation, our tendency to invest more and more in a past decision, even when it creates problems for us. Pursuing opportunities without understanding the constraints of basic positioning can be extremely dangerous.