“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. – Dwight D. Eisenhower I’ve been reading Chernow’s latest epic biography, “Grant,” it’s fantastic, and it has me drawing comparisons between business and military strategy. Grant

I tend to think of evolution as an analogy to business. How many times have you heard that it’s survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog, or how brutal economics can be. Most of that is true, except for the dogs – I’ve never heard of a cannibalistic dog – but none the less it can be

A key challenge of any potential acquirer is understanding the business; it’s people and processes from the outside. It’s one thing to understand that a company has a good product and a good market or that – according to its financial statements – it has good margins. It is entirely another to understand how it