apply-force-concentration

Apply Force Concentration

Map every contested area as empty or full, concentrate all force on the empty while completely avoiding the full, remain formless to prevent the opponent from concentrating against you, and shape the engagement so the opponent's strength becomes irrelevant.

Why This Is Best Practice

Origin: Chapter 6 of The Art of War — "Weak Points and Strong" (虛實, Emptiness and Fullness) — is the tactical chapter that operationalises the indirect strategy principle. "An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness." (Ch.6, Giles trans.) Chapter 12 (Attack by Fire) extends the principle: disruption — like fire — multiplies force at the point of application.

Adopted by: Moltke the Elder's campaign theory (19th century Prussian military) operationalised this as Kesselschlacht (encirclement) — concentrate overwhelming force at a single point rather than equal force along the entire front. Peter Thiel's Zero to One restates it for startups: dominate a small market completely rather than entering a large market partially. Amazon's geographic expansion strategy executed it precisely — dominate one city (Seattle), then the next, rather than launching everywhere simultaneously with insufficient density.

Impact: Dispersed force produces dispersed results — mediocre everywhere. Concentrated force produces decisive results in the chosen engagement, even against a stronger opponent overall. A startup with 10% of an incumbent's resources that concentrates 100% on a single segment can achieve local superiority and win that segment, then use that position to expand.

Why best: Most organisations spread resources because it feels safer — coverage everywhere, committed to nothing. This produces an opponent who is weak everywhere and dominant nowhere. Concentration requires the discipline to explicitly abandon contests you cannot win and commit fully to the contests you can. The principle scales from feature prioritisation to market selection to sales territory allocation.

Sources: Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Giles trans. 1910) — Ch.6 (Weak Points and Strong), Ch.12 (Attack by Fire); Moltke the Elder, Instructions for Superior Commanders (1869); Thiel, Zero to One (2014); Bezos letters on geographic expansion discipline

Steps

Step 1: Map all contested areas

List every market segment, product feature, customer account, sales territory, or channel where you are competing or considering competing. This is the complete map of the battlefield.

For each area, write a one-line description of what you would need to win it and what your opponent's current strength in that area is.

Step 2: Classify each area as 虛 (empty) or 實 (full)

For each contested area, assess: is the opponent's position 虛 (empty, weak, over-extended, or undefended) or 實 (full, strong, deeply entrenched, actively defended)?

虛 (empty) signals:

• Opponent is present but under-investing
• Opponent's product/service is a poor fit for this segment's specific needs
• Opponent is distracted by a primary battle elsewhere
• Opponent has structural disadvantages in this area (high cost to serve, regulatory complexity, cultural distance from their core)
• The area is new and the opponent has not yet committed

實 (full) signals:

• Opponent has deep customer relationships, high switching costs, and consistent investment
• Opponent has a structural cost or capability advantage in this area
• Opponent has made public commitments to defend this area
• Winning here would require defeating the opponent's primary strength

Step 3: Concentrate all force on 虛; abandon 實

This step requires discipline. You will abandon areas where you are currently present but cannot win, and concentrate all resources on the areas where the opponent is weakest.

"He who tries to defend everything defends nothing." (attributed to Frederick the Great, consistent with Ch.6 principle)

Concentration checklist:

• Are all resources (budget, headcount, leadership attention) pointed at the 虛 areas?
• Have you explicitly stopped investment in 實 areas where you cannot win?
• Is there a single point of maximum concentration, or is force still dispersed?

For product strategy: concentrate engineering, marketing, and sales on the segment where your differentiation is sharpest and the opponent's coverage is weakest.

For sales: concentrate the best reps on the accounts with the highest probability of winning, not spread evenly across all accounts.

Step 4: Be formless — prevent the opponent from concentrating against you

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate." (Ch.6, Griffith trans.)

Formlessness means the opponent cannot identify your point of concentration and cannot bring their strength to bear against it before you have established your position.

Tactics for formlessness:

• Do not announce your target segment, account, or market focus publicly before you have established a defensible position
• Create the appearance of activity in multiple areas simultaneously while concentrating force in one
• Use the orthodox (正) force to draw the opponent's attention and defensive resources to the wrong area while the unorthodox (奇) force concentrates on the real target
• Move faster than the opponent's intelligence cycle — establish the position before they can respond

Step 5: Shape the opponent's concentration

The objective is not just to avoid their strength but to actively manoeuvre them into positions where their strength cannot be brought to bear on your point of concentration.

Shaping tactics:

• Engage them in a secondary market to draw resources away from the primary target
• Create a public competitive dispute in an area that is not your true objective
• Make an acquisition or partnership announcement that signals a threat in the wrong direction
• Create urgency in a market they value but you are willing to concede, drawing their investment away from your real target

Step 6: Maintain initiative — never let the opponent dictate the contest point

Initiative means you choose where battles happen. An opponent who has initiative forces you to respond, depleting resources and attention on their chosen terrain. Maintaining initiative keeps the battles on terrain you chose.

Signs you have lost initiative:

• You are responding to competitive moves rather than making them
• Your roadmap is driven by competitor feature parity rather than your segment's specific needs
• You are defending existing accounts rather than expanding

Restoring initiative: Re-assess the map, find 虛 areas the opponent has not yet defended, and re-concentrate there before the opponent can establish their position.

Rules

• Never spread force to achieve coverage. Coverage is not a strategy. Concentration in the right area is a strategy.
• Explicitly decide what you are abandoning. Concentration requires abandonment. Name the 實 areas you are not contesting and remove resources from them.
• Maintain formlessness until the position is established. Once the opponent knows your concentration point, they will attempt to counter-concentrate. Move fast; don't signal.
• Control the initiative. The opponent who dictates where battles happen controls the campaign. If you are reacting, you have lost initiative — reassess and find a new 虛 area.
• Reassess 虛/實 continuously. An area that was 虛 last quarter may be 實 this quarter if the opponent has responded to your concentration. Update the map regularly.

Examples

Thiel/PayPal: dominate online auctions first (segment concentration): PayPal's first concentration: eBay power sellers. Not "all e-commerce" — a specific, 虛 segment where existing payment solutions were terrible and the opponent (traditional financial services) had no interest in serving. 100% of product and growth resources concentrated on eBay power sellers until PayPal had dominant share of that segment. Then expanded. eBay eventually acquired PayPal for $1.5B — they could not dislodge them from their core segment.

Feature concentration (product team, 3 engineers): Map: competitor has features in CRM integration, reporting, mobile app, API, and team management. Assess: CRM integration (incumbent has deep Salesforce integration — 實); reporting (adequate — 實); mobile (weak — 虛); API (undocumented, poor — 虛); team management (solid — 實). Concentrate all 3 engineers on mobile + API. Build 2 features to superiority rather than 5 features to mediocrity. Win the mobile-first and developer segments; expand from there.

Geographic market expansion (Amazon's density model): Amazon's physical expansion (grocery, retail) uses force concentration: launch in one city, achieve delivery density that makes unit economics work, then expand. Launching in 50 cities simultaneously at insufficient density produces poor unit economics everywhere. One city at full density produces a profitable model to replicate.

Common Mistakes

Spreading to cover all areas: The natural instinct is to be present everywhere to capture every opportunity. This produces a mediocre competitor in every area and a strong competitor in none. Name your concentration and abandon everything else.

Concentrating on 實 areas because they are large: A large, well-defended market is attractive and often the most crowded. The opponent's strength in a large market does not make it strategically accessible. Find the 虛 area adjacent to the large market and build from there.

Becoming visible before the position is established: Announcing your target segment or concentration point before you have a defensible position invites the opponent to counter-concentrate. Move quietly and quickly; announce when the position is already established.

Losing initiative by responding: Allowing the opponent's roadmap, feature announcements, or competitive moves to determine your priorities. This transfers initiative to the opponent. Maintain your own offensive concentration; respond only when the threat is to your core position.

Failing to re-assess: An area that was 虛 last quarter may be 實 today. Continuously update the 虛/實 map and re-concentrate as the landscape changes.