Wisdom from the East -- and from South Florida; Two South Florida writers share their ideas on gaining a competitive edge and finding a personal business niche.

BY RICHARD PACHTER
rpachter@herald.com
19 April 2004
The Miami Herald
(c) Copyright 2004, The Miami Herald. All Rights Reserved.

The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge. Kaihan Krippendorff. Texere. 288 pages. $29.95

Kaihan Krippendorff is a Miami-based executive and consultant. Despite a title that might suggest a memoir by Donald Trump, his new book is an interesting and well-constructed effort to make an aspect of traditional Asian philosophical thinking comprehensible and actionable to Western business minds.

As a student at Columbia Business School, Krippendorff was encouraged by a professor to consider turning his hobby of compiling business cases into a book. The 36 Stratagems, a 2,500-year-old text of similar pedigree as Sun Tzu's celebrated Art of War, provided the perfect context. Each stratagem is used to portray at least one legendary story, as well as a contemporary business tale involving companies like Sony, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Coca Cola and others.

Here are some of the stratagems (and chapter titles): To catch something, first let it go; Exchange a brick for a jade; Invite your enemy onto the roof, then remove the ladder; Lure the tiger down from the mountain; Befriend the distant enemy to attack one nearby; Kill with a borrowed knife; Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao; The stratagem of sowing discord; Beat the grass to startle the snake; Loot a burning house; Feign madness but keep your balance; Clamor in the east: attack to the west; Fool the emperor and cross in sea; Create something out of nothing; Hide a dagger behind a smile; and so forth.

Krippendorff's book is an interesting one. Whether readers will be adept enough to figure out which stratagem would best be employed in any given situation is an open question. To that end, the author includes a useful appendix that suggests ways to employ the stratagems as brainstorming tools. Regardless, thinking about business challenges and situations in new ways can't hurt and might actually help a great deal.