Episode 67: Sun Tzu

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Preparation. It's at the heart of the Art of War. The idea that knowledge is power, that careful and cold-eyed examination of your relative strengths and weaknesses and those of your competitors are what have made this a critical source of wisdom for military and corporate strategists for centuries. But how well does it hold up in the digital age? What lessons can the digital strategist glean from it? And has the disruptive power of digital change rendered the teachings of Sun Tzu meaningless today?