ABSTRACT
“Being fustest with the mostest” is the approach that many people consider the entrepreneurial strategy par excellence. To be sure, a good many entrepreneurs have indeed chosen this strategy. Two completely different entrepreneurial strategies were summed up by another battle-winning Confederate general in America’s Civil War, who said, “Hit them where they ain’t.” They might be called creative imitation and entrepreneurial judo, respectively. Entrepreneurial judo requires some degree of genuine innovation. Once the toll-gate strategy has attained its objective, the company is “mature.” It can only grow as fast as its end users grow. But it can go down fast. It can become obsolete almost overnight if someone finds a different way of satisfying the same end use. In a new technology, a new industry, or a new market, the specialty skill strategy offers an optimal ratio of opportunity to risk of failure. Until 1929 the cosmetics market was a “specialty market,” a market of the upper middle class.
