Monday, September 22, 2008

A Shameless Attempt at Self Promotion ;-)


As noted in an earlier post, a NEW BOOK, The John Boyd Roundtable, Debating Science, Strategy, and War has joined the millions of remnants of dead trees that are offered to a curious public every year. So in a shameless plug I heartily recommend this book as a quick primer to introduce you to John Boyd's mind.

I used that post to introduce my colleagues, who in my opinion carried the bulk of what the book is about. My treatise dealt with looking at Boyd's strategy through the prism of military history and true to a historian's craft followed the empirical evidence chain that Boyd used to build his ideas on the foundation of past military achievements.

Our effort could not have been possible without the masterful work done by Lt Col, Frans Osinga of the Netherlands Air Force who wrote, Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, and W.F. “Fred” Zimmerman of Nimble Books, who sought out Mark Safranski, with an offer to publish the results of our roundtable.

John Boyd's theory the OODA loop has found traction in fields far from the world of military science.

Chet Richards uses the OODA loop strategy in business applications Boyd at FBEMBA.

And in the world of global supply chains, Shawn at Asia Logistics Wrap has this post, Asia Logistics Wrap: Global IT Deployment.

And politics, where Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report recently described John McCain's strategy as employment of the OODA Loop. McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama.
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There are over six billion ways to employ Boyd's strategy, one for every person on the planet, who in order to survive goes through those four simple stages every day.

Again, they are, Observe, then Orient, then make a Decision, then Act, on the data from the previous stages. Success means doing it faster and smarter than the other guy.

EARLY REVIEWS:
Shlok Vaidya:

Michael Tanji:

Pundita

Sam Liles:

1 comment:

Dan tdaxp said...

Excellent description!