HBR On Strategy · Harvard Business Review

Stress Test Your Strategy Before It Fails

·27 min

This episode features Arjun Singh, an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, explaining corporate wargaming to HBR IdeaCast host Alison Beard. Singh defines wargaming as a disciplined dress rehearsal for stress-testing business strategies before market deployment. He traces its origins from military practice to business applications over the last 40-50 years. Singh contrasts wargaming with traditional scenario planning by emphasizing its focus on predicting competitor actions and formulating specific responses. He details a classroom exercise called "the battle for mobility," involving teams representing GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, Tesla, Uber, and Waymo. The professor categorizes wargames into three levels: strategic, operational, and tactical, each with different time horizons and executive involvement. He cites the pharmaceutical industry as a frequent user, where a client prepared for a potential FDA rejection of a $5+ billion drug. Singh recounts a 2017 student wargame that simulated a 95% travel demand drop, mirroring the later COVID-19 shock. A key insight is that wargaming forces companies to confront and define their competitors broadly, as when airlines must consider Zoom a competitor for business travel. The process specifically helps large incumbents avoid blind spots by challenging entrenched assumptions about industry norms. Singh argues the primary output is a concrete, actionable playbook with assigned owners, preventing post-workshop inertia. He reveals that effective wargames require a significant time investment, typically one to one-and-a-half days, not just a few hours. Cultural resistance from organizations uncomfortable with challenging senior leadership's assumptions is a common barrier. The exercise compels participants to deeply analyze "what winning means" for their own company and for their rivals, generating unexpected insights. Singh notes that even startups can use simplified versions of this toolkit to avoid costly early mistakes. He shares an example where a wargame led a company in the wrong direction due to flawed assumptions, but early warning signals allowed for quick correction. The tone is educational and conversational, with the host posing practical questions to clarify the methodology. This episode is ideal for strategy leaders, product managers, and consultants seeking a structured approach to competitive analysis and risk mitigation. Listeners who prefer high-level conceptual discussions over practical, step-by-step processes might find the operational details less engaging.

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A practical rehearsal for strategies that need to hold up in the marketplace.

Corporate wargaming comes across as a useful way to pressure-test strategy before it hits the marketplace. Arjun Singh, an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, lays out how teams collect market information and competitive intelligence, then work through rivals,…

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Run your strategy through a rival's eyes before you deploy it.

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