Hmm, control the middle. What does it mean in chess? Set your pieces out in the middle of the board so as to starve your opponent of opportunities, without know

Hmm, control the middle. What does it mean in chess? Set your pieces out in the middle of the board so as to starve your opponent of opportunities, without knowing or caring what exactly those opportunities are. How does one do this in business? Hiring all the smart people, even if they spend their time unproductively, springs to mind. Sponsoring regulation, so that companies not in your unique position will struggle to establish themselves, is another way, perhaps. Cutting across multiple consumer categories, so that you can move in any direction where a competitor may try to outflank you (eg. Microsoft launching Xbox to compete with Sony), maybe? Or what about pricing - dominate the mid-priced products, avoiding the perils of thin margins at the low end and excessive R&D costs at the top. Or the supply chain - good old fashioned vertical integration, leaving only the broadest, most fungible activities to outside firms. In venture capital, thinking about the power of networks, the ability to connect innovation to expertise to capital, because you have the contacts and the credibility. It would be useful to think of counter-examples of successful businesses that clearly did not seize the middle. Hard to build analysis on top of abstract interpretation though.