This is really good. I wonder if you could apply the same philosophy to business or start-ups: Focus on doing what you're doing again and again, really fast, with no breathing room for your opponents, and they will wear down.
It's vaguely related to the concept of being able get inside your opponent's OODA loop, with the added bonus of physical fatigue in addition to creating situations where the opponent cannot adjust.
I can't say for sure (never played football, but I do play fairly high level ultimate frisbee), but when a team starts upping its tempo, it pushes both your mind and body's ability to adapt. Usually the first thing to go is your mind. You start losing your ability to predict and anticipate as well, and as a result you have to work your body even harder to compensate, which gets you tired even faster etc etc.
I guess there's a business analogy where, where the mental aspect becomes business planning, and the physical, is the actual creation of the product/service. In fact, I'm fairly sure that OODA loops and all that jazz are (were?) fairly popular in all those business books and mags. The question is how many people can actually successfully implement it.
For context, OODA loops (uh, observe orient decide act) were originally created by John Boyd in the context of war fighting, drawing inspiration from Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz. The idea's been sitting around for decades, and 'officially' part of how the US Military is 'suppose' to fight. But even though everyone 'knows' about OODA and maneuver warfare, it's still not always pulled off.
And speaking of tempo, Venkatesh Rao of Gervais Theory fame is releasing a book on that very subject in the next quarter. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/tempo/
Really glad to see this here on HN. I read Boyd by Robert Coram a month ago and I still can't stop seeing the parallels in any competitive endevavor. Definitely a great book for hackers.
The book covers the history behind Boyd's OODA loop and a lot of Pentagon bureaucratic infighting as well. Corporate politics at its finest.
Less hagiography (still more than I would care for, but not as much as the other book) and is focused more on explaining Boyd's ideas, less on telling his story (still a biography, but the difference in emphasis is notable).
If you're interested in reading the original briefings by Boyd, you can find them at the links below. Of course, reading his slides isn't the same as actually sitting through his briefing, but the latter option is unfortunately no longer available:
I agree that Coram's book had a taste of hagiography to it. I still found that the underling military theories made a lot more sense to me when revealed in the context of Boyd's upbringing and his own gradual development of the theories. I should definitely read Hammond next, thanks.
I've made it about 2/3 of the way through Boyd's slides and they're very distractingly dense. I'm sure they worked better with a live session.
I remember hearing from a coach (albeit soccer) constantly: "Size hurts, speed kills." It can definitely be applied to the business/start-up arena. Agility and speed of innovation are often crippled as a company grows, leaving others to out-innovate, respond more quickly to market demands and capitalize on new opportunities.
