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“Fustest with the Mostest”

Of late, “strategy in business”* has become the “in” word, with any
number of books written about it.† However, I have not come across
any discussion of entrepreneurial strategies. Yet they are important;
they are distinct; and they are different.
There are four specifically entrepreneurial strategies:

1. Being “Fustest with the Mostest”;
2. “Hitting Them Where They Ain’t”;
3. Finding and occupying a specialized “ecological niche”;
4. Changing the economic characteristics of a product, a market,
or an industry.

These four strategies are not mutually exclusive. One and the same
entrepreneur often combines two, sometimes even elements of three, in one
strategy. They are also not always sharply differentiated; the same strategy
might, for instance, be classified as “Hitting Them Where They Ain’t” or
as “Finding and occupying a specialized ‘ecological niche.’” Still, each of
these four has its prerequisites. Each fits certain kinds of innovation and
does not fit others. Each requires specific behavior on the part of the entre-
preneur. Finally, each has its own limitations and carries its own risks.

*The 1952 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary still defined strategy as:
“Generalship; the art of war; management of an army or armies in a campaign.”
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., first applied the term to the conduct of a business in 1962 in
his pioneering Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press), which stud-
ied the evolution of management in the big corporation. But shortly thereafter, in
1963, when I wrote the first analysis of business strategy, the publisher and I found
that the word could not be used in the title without risk of serious misunderstanding.
Booksellers, magazine editors, and senior business executives all assured us that
“strategy” for them meant the conduct of military or election campaigns. The book
discussed most that is now considered “strategy.” It uses the word in the text. But the
title we chose was Managing for Results.
† Of which I have found Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategies (New York:
Free Press, 1980) the most useful.
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