Customer Rating: 
Summary: One of the best business book
Comment: The book is very good and give the reader a broad perspective and 360 degree view of business model. It tells you how to think on another side of what we thought. Tell you the examples from the past. Even though it forces some example to be an example of the strategy, it's still good to know what we should look. I believe this is one of the best book for any business man who has 360 degree perspective.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good...
Comment: Several good ideas in this book on marketing strategies for smaller companies; that made the book worth reading. The author spent too much time on the discussion of Judo. The book contains some memorable phases such as "Don't moon the giant", which would have been good advice for Netscape to follow. Great discussion on how to use a large company's strengths against it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clever analogy with great insights
Comment: The judo analogy is a very clever way to explore how small companies can defeat large companies. I particularly liked the ideas of the "puppy dog ploy", push when pulled, and the concept of leverage. I highly recommend this book for managers facing big, powerful companies.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hindsight strategy: Leveraging the Obvious to get consulting
Comment: The usual garbage. Let's find a firm which has succeeded (for example RealNetworks) despite small size, and force fit it into our facile strategic model. Then let's find a firm which has been creamed (for example Novell) and show (by a selective telling of history) how it failed to do what our stupid (but seductively named) model would have suggested. Repeat three or four times and you have a book.It is easy to tell stories, but that is all this book does. The predictive power of this claptrap will be zero - and results, specifically future results, are all that counts. Prospective CEOs should look inwards and discover themselves rather than waste their time on this and similar books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Maximizing Speed, Balance, and Leverage
Comment: In their Preface, Yoffie and Kwak explain that their book "is built on two broad metaphors that we hope readers will find compelling in thinking about the strategic challenges their businesses face. Our primary metaphor comes from the sport of judo, which originated in late nineteenth-century Japan. Judo requires quickness, agility, and the ability to outmaneuver the competition. Most important, in judo, unlike many martial arts, true strength comes from turning your opponent's weight and power to your advantage." The other principal metaphor is derived from sumo wrestling (i.e. making the most of one's strength and power") which the authors concede "can be a very sensitive topic for the very large companies that are most likely to profit from" techniques which such advantages permit.Yoffie and Kwak carefully organize their excellent material within three Parts: Principles of Judo Strategy (Chapters 1-4), Masters of Judo Strategy (Chapters 5-7), and Responding to Judo Strategy (Chapters 8 and 9). In the final chapter, they offer and then explain five "Rules" to follow when pursuing a Judo Strategy: (1) Maintain a deep focus on your core strategy, (2) Stay on the offensive but avoid frontal assaults, (3) Plan and be prepared to pivot, (4) Look for leverage in the strangest places, and (5) Face the music. While pursuing a Judo Strategy, it is also important to remember that "judo is ultimately a zero-sum game, and business, often times, is not. Moreover, in judo, you can focus solely on a single opponent, while in business, other groups, especially customers, require your attention."
Clearly, Yoffie and Kwak fully understand the parameters of relevance of the two principal metaphors. Neither is a "bullet" (silver or otherwise) which always hits the designated target. Moreover, judo strategists may well find themselves in competition with judo strategists in another organization. In that event, those who move faster, are more agile, maintain better balance, apply greater leverage, and are better able to outmaneuver the competition will prevail. One of this book's greatest benefits is derived from what the authors learned during their interviews of various "masters" of judo strategy such as Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky of Palm Computing, Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, and Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie of CNET Networks. Not all of their circumstances and experiences are necessarily relevant to each reader's. For that reason, I urge those who read this book to focus on understanding the basic principles of judo strategy, then formulate a strategy (based on those principles) which will enable their specific organization (regardless of its size or nature) to move faster, be more agile, maintain better balance, and apply greater leverage so that it will outmaneuver its own competition. Together with those whom they interviewed, Yoffie and Kwak explain HOW.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Guy Kawasaki's How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit, Adam Morgan's Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, Don Taylor and Jeanne Smalling Archer's Up Against the Wal-Marts: How Your Business Can Prosper in the Shadow of the Retail Giants, and Samuel B. Griffin's translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
