Strategy advisor Roger Martin explains how 2,000 year old military thinking is useful in modern business strategy.

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Business leaders can gain valuable insights from history’s great military strategists. Roger Martin, an author and the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, suggests examining "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.

Although the text is more than 2,000 years old, Roger argues that it contains timeless philosophy that applies not only to the battlefield, but also to modern business strategy. To Roger, people often think war and business is all about numbers and hard data. But in reality, it’s often just as important to think about more qualitative aspects about your company and its competition. And that’s where philosophy and customer-focused design come into play.

0:00 Is ‘The Art of War’ as good as an MBA?
2:19 “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”
3:25 “There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare”
4:22 “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard”
5:05 “Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”
6:28 The tripartite view of the future

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Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/sun-tzu-the-art-of-war/

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About Roger Martin:
In 2017, Roger Martin was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers.

Martin is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego, and Ford.

Martin is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, where he served as dean from 1998-2013. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants.

His newest book is A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness. His previous twelve books include When More is Not Better, Creating Great Choices written with Jennifer Riel, Getting Beyond Better written with Sally Osberg, and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley, which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50. He has written 32 Harvard Business Review articles.

Martin received his BA from Harvard College, with a concentration in economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. He lives in South Florida with his wife, Marie-Louise Skafte.

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