Installments in the series:

The Dark Side of Business Strategy

This series of entries explores the dark side of business strategy--the situations in which simple ideas of "competition" fail to dispel waste and abuse.

Introduction to the Dark Side

Dark-side strategies extract payments without creating value in return

January 2, 2010  By Richard Rumelt 

When you buy a hamburger from McDonald’s you know the product and you know that you value it more than the money paid for it. Combine this sort of voluntary transaction with Darwin’s principle of “survival of the fittest,” and Full entry→

Richard Helms Explains `Skimming’

Where there are large flows of money, you will find skimmers

January 3, 2010  By Richard Rumelt 

In 1973 I was living in Iran, on leave from my faculty  position at Harvard Business School, helping to start a new business school in Tehran—the Iran Center for Management Studies (ICMS). While there I spent an afternoon with Richard Full entry→

The Ecology of Extortion

Coercion in the USSR and in the US legal system

January 4, 2010  By Richard Rumelt 

Extortioners coerce payments by threatening loss or violence. When I was in high-school in Queens, New York, the younger students were shaken down each day by Gino and his two friends. We had to cough up lunch money or be Full entry→

Exploiting Human Weakness and Ignorance

Competitors who exploit human frailties do not contribute to society

January 5, 2010  By Richard Rumelt 

In 1956 Chairman Mao declared a new openness in the Chinese Communist Party. He echoed the Soviet Party’s criticisms of Stalin and declared “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” It wasn’t long before criticism arrived. Wall-posters and speakers began to complain Full entry→