The Strategy in Competitive Interactions

This paper reviews, discusses, and expands the “core guidance” definition of strategy as “the smallest set of choices to optimally guide (or force) other choices.” It first discusses what this definition contributes relative to the existing proposed definitions. It then considers the extension of this definition to the context of competitive interactions: whether the definition makes sense in that context and what it implies for decisions to be strategic in such context. As part of this analysis, it also uses the definition to explore a new issue: why quantity-based competitive moves might be more strategic than price-based moves.