Cunning Plans

Cunning plans, guile and deception are alive and well in business strategy. Deception, ambiguity and stealth are all ways to create information asymmetry: one knows things that his/her competitors do not know, and this is at the heart of all cunning plans. Cunning plans provide ways to confound competitors about the nature and intentions of a business, its size, capacity and strategic direction, making it difficult for them to assess the nature and level of threat that the business poses to them and slowing down their decision–action cycle time. The Feint strategy involves pretending to put one's resource into something but without actually doing so. The Veneer strategy is about covering over one's core business with a thin skin that makes it look more attractive.