Focus

Focus ”the principle of hitting the other fellow as hard as you can ”is the generation of superior combat power at a particular time and place that enables a numerically inferior force to achieve decisive local superiority, ^[4] thereby providing an advantage when and where it matters most.

At the strategic level Israel endeavored to break the Arab coalition by focusing its attack on the coalition s leader, Egypt, rather than face Arab threats on three fronts and risk dilution of its limited combat power. On the tactical level Tal s decision to strike the Egyptians with fists of armor enabled him to inflict heavy damage to critical points in his larger opponent s defenses.

Since its initial public offering in 1999, upstart Juniper Networks has employed a focused attack to infiltrate the market for high-end Internet routers. Routers ”devices that act as traffic cops to move data packets across the Internet ”serve a wide variety of markets and command considerably different profit margins; the high-end backbone routers, used by telecom companies, yield the highest profits. Juniper managed to take share from Cisco, the dominant incumbent, which served all markets from high- to low-end routers; however, Cisco did not serve the telecom market with particular fervor or focus.

Sensing opportunity, Juniper committed all of its resources to building a faster, more reliable router designed expressly for these large telecom operators. It hired leading Internet protocol engineers to design a faster router and dedicated researchers to get in the trenches with telecom operators to determine exactly what they wanted in terms of operability. And, between 1999 and 2002, it invested nearly $450 million in research and development. ^[5] The result of these efforts was a router four times faster than Cisco s comparable offering and more suited to the unique needs of telecom companies. To date Juniper has gained an approximate 30 to 40 percent market share.

The Marines high proficiency in focus can guide in your efforts to uncover lucrative opportunities, shift resources toward them, and manage the accompanying risk in business. The Marines rely heavily on information to locate lucrative targets as they arise and to commit available forces rapidly and in a coordinated fashion. In every combat engagement they designate a main effort, which can change depending on the course of battle. And they acknowledge that focusing resources in support of the main effort requires economy of force elsewhere.

^[4] Warfighting , 41.

^[5] Based on Juniper 10-K filings: research and development expenses 1999 “2002.