The History of Strategy

From Sun Tzu to Startups: Why the History of Strategy Matters for Entrepreneurs

The Problem

When you’re hustling to keep the lights on (literally and figuratively) in South Africa, the history of strategy can feel irrelevant. Why should a township retailer or SaaS founder care about Sun Tzu, consulting firms, or academic theories?

The risk is that we treat strategy as a buzzword without understanding where the ideas came from – and whether they fit our context.

The Approach

The research behind this topic traces the evolution of strategy from military thinking to modern business practice:

1. Sun Tzu (The Art of War): A Chinese general around 544 B.C., whose work on ordinary (Zheng) and extraordinary (Qi) forces highlighted using both direct and indirect approaches to strike where the enemy is least prepared. These ideas influenced leaders like Napoleon and continue to shape business thinking.
2. Early management consulting (late 1800s–1940s):
   1. Arthur D. Little (1886) – pioneering management consulting, involved in major projects like the NASDAQ system and Apollo 11 planning.
   2. Booz Allen Hamilton (founded 1914) – developed concepts like the Product Life Cycle and supported US Navy strategy.
3. Strategy as a business function (1960s onwards):
   1. Boston Consulting Group (1963) – Bruce Henderson’s “high-concept” strategic ideas.
   2. Bain Consulting – spun out of BCG, focused on close, execution-oriented client work.
   3. McKinsey – scaled strategy consulting through rapid learning and codifying insights.
4. Academic consolidation:
   1. Henderson linked business competition to biological competition (Principle of Competitive Exclusion), emphasising the need for unique advantage.
   2. Michael Porter (1970s onwards) formalised strategy with concepts like competitive forces and operational effectiveness, later institutionalised through the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard.

This is historical and conceptual research; it synthesises writings and case histories rather than running experiments.

The Results

The evolution of strategy highlights a few patterns:

1. Strategy has always been about competition, differentiation and positioning, whether on the battlefield or in business.
2. Over time, strategy moved from intuition and experience to more structured analysis and frameworks.
3. Consulting firms helped package and scale strategic thinking, then academics formalised it into a discipline.
4. The core idea remains: organisations need to develop unique ways of competing and cannot all win by doing the same thing.

Lessons for founders

What the research shows

1. Strategy thinking comes from centuries of dealing with limited resources, uncertainty and competition.
2. Modern business strategy is a mix of:
   1. Military-style positioning and timing.
   2. Structured analysis and modelling from consulting and academia.
   3. Recognition that firms must be different enough to survive (unique advantage).

What this suggests you might try in your startup

1. Borrow the principle, not the theatrics, from Sun Tzu.
   Look for “Qi” moves: indirect, unexpected ways to serve customers. For example, a small logistics startup partnering with township-based shops instead of competing with big retailers head-on.
2. Use frameworks as tools, not religion.
   Porter’s ideas or consulting frameworks can help you structure thinking, but they’re not a substitute for knowing your customers in Soweto, Khayelitsha or Gaborone.
3. Accept that you must be different.
   If your startup looks exactly like three others in your city, research suggests long-term competition will wipe out your profits.
4. Learn fast like McKinsey, execute like Bain.
   In practice, this means: experiment, capture lessons, and actually implement your chosen direction, not just talk about it in pitch decks.
5. Connect global ideas to local realities.
   When you read strategy books, constantly ask: “How does this play out with my customers, my regulatory constraints, my actual cash runway?”