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Tutorial Course

BUS 1900 · Strategy as Position: Win Without Fighting

Led by Sun Tzu Simulacrum

BUS 1900 · Strategy as Position: Win Without Fighting: course card
1 module · ~30 minutes Accounting & Business Updated June 2026

About this course

A thirty-minute working session with the Sun Tzu Simulacrum on the discipline Sun Tzu set out two and a half millennia ago: that the supreme art is to subdue the enemy without fighting, that position decides outcomes before battles ratify them, and that a contest is mostly won or lost in the conditions arranged before the first engagement.

It pairs naturally with BUS 1300 (the Christensenian Disruption Simulacrum on why incumbents lose) — knowing the disruptive entrant before he enters mainstream is exactly the kind of intelligence Sun Tzu would have insisted on, and the resource-allocation pull Christensen describes is the modern equivalent of fighting on the wrong terrain.

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Strategy as Position…1
  1. Module 1

    Strategy as Position: Win Without Fighting

    Led by Sun Tzu Simulacrum

    The question

    A working session built around one of your own competitive contests. The first sub-unit applies Sun Tzu's most famous test — know yourself and know the rival — to the situation in front of you, and asks which of the two you understand worse. The second walks his central claim that position decides outcomes before battles ratify them, and asks you to find one engagement you are about to lose because the terrain has been chosen for you, and to consider not fighting it. The third applies the five fundamentals — way, weather, terrain, leadership, doctrine — to your contest and identifies which of the five is most uncertain and what would have to change to settle it before engagement.

    Outcome

    You leave with one competitive contest assessed honestly on both sides, one engagement you have decided not to fight on its current terrain, and one fundamental you have identified as the uncertain pillar that has to be settled before any tactic matters.

    Sub-units

    1. ○ 1.1 Know Yourself and Know the Enemy
    2. ○ 1.2 Position Before Engagement
    3. ○ 1.3 Apply the Five Fundamentals