The Importance of Scouting in Alexander’s Campaigns and Business Applications:
Written by Garry Tiscovschi, reviewed by Saskia Higgins & Oscar O’Neill
The year is 334 BC, and Alexander fills a boat full of his “Companion” followers to perform naval reconnaissance on the Persian position.
The Achaemenid king, Darius III, is spotted shepherding his men towards a narrow pass assumed to be just 2.6 km wide. Unlike Darius, Alexander is now acutely aware of the opportunity. He gives a rousing speech to his men listing the many advantages the Macedonians have over their opponents. Among these is the favour of the gods. They have clearly herded the Persians into an area where their “vast multitude would be useless” (Arrian 1884). The Macedonians, on the other hand, could now adapt their strategy, deepening the ranks of their unstoppable phalanx to increase its impact.
Modern historians report that ~40,000 Macedonians faced 50–60,000 opponents in the narrow pass at Issus (Clark, Turner 2018). Estimates suggest that the Persians lost anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 fighters while the triumphant Macedonians suffered 5000 wounded and ~500 dead/MIA (Quintus 1984).
The Greeks and their allies managed to use their knowledge of the arena of conflict better than those who had claimed governance of it. Their use of reconnaissance seems obvious to us now and yet the world today is still full of Dariuses. Companies still launch products for demographics they haven’t studied. Businesses still launch websites without appropriate analytics. The ground upon which these organizations are operating on is not being surveyed.
Modern Applications:
‘Reconnaissance’ techniques such as ethnographic research, cohort analysis, competitor research and A/B testing can allow product developers to get a sense of how and why their products will be used. Not using these can lead to Darius-esque results!
An example of a Persian sized giant not ‘scouting’ enough is Nokia. Nokia went from being the ‘king of kings’ with a 51% mobile market share in 2007 to just 3%, 5 years later(Statista 2013). Although Nokia’s corporate history is a complex matter and many factors can be used to explain the rapid decline, their shortage of ‘recon’ didn’t help. Unlike Darius, Nokia wasn’t necessarily behind in terms of technological power. It’s new phones were arguably engineering marvels . They featured impressive software efficiency, impressive battery life, durability, superior cameras, etc. Unfortunately for the phones though, the most pressing matters weren’t prioritized. One ex-executive explains this mis-prioritisation below:
“There was no finance, no budget to keep the software platform good, and it was not analyzed as an important business component”. Another quote reads, “third-party ecosystem and apps were a second priority” (Lamberg, Lubinaitė, Ojala, Tikkanen 2019).
Symbolically, in 2006/2007 Nokia dissolved its ‘Future Technologies’ team, which had previously focused on scouting for future tech-trends and related business opportunities (Lamberg, Lubinaitė, Ojala, Tikkanen 2019). Even without the more advanced techniques listed above, had the company simply placed a Symbian phone in a room beside an Android and an Apple, then let some customers in, the problem would have become very obvious. One ex-Nokia developer online claims this exact experiment was used by a US mobile carrier to reject a Nokia phone, although I couldn’t confirm the story elsewhere(Reiss 2019).
Regardless, had Nokia’s Mobile division scouted ahead, they could’ve avoided slaughtering themselves on metaphorical Greek pikes in some dusty narrow pass and maybe not lost literal billions as a result of being out-competed. (Nokia Market Cap)
Immediate Applications for You Today:
Nowadays, ‘scouting’ tools such as Google Analytics can be applied to a product website in a matter of minutes. Open an analytics tracking account, copy and paste the JavaScript script and you’re good to go. No need to fill a boat full of “Companions”. Website analytics let you accurately study user behavior: how long they stay, where they came from, the pages they move to, what users value or prioritise and so on. This information can be vital in understanding the nature of your industry and how your own product/software updates affect it.
A lack of reconnaissance is a disease that can afflict even the least expecting. It was easy for me to laugh at Varus leading legions blindly into German forests with no recon, before being ambushed and destroyed at Teutoburg Forest. Until I realised I was doing the same thing (albeit just a little less dramatically).
I was a whole month into developing a software project according to documented system requirements before I conjured the neurons to ask my supervisor who my users actually were. I learned more about the people I was building for and avoided creating something nobody could really use. Luckily we had enough time to adapt the work, but in other cases a month without recon can be more than enough time for an army of ferocious Teutons to descend upon your column from the unexplored tree-line. Or in my case some disgruntled users: equally atrocious.
Don’t be a Darius, scout ahead, unless you like Arminius style surprises of course.
Have any thoughts about Nokia, Darius III or Naval Reconnaissance? Comment below!
References:
- Arian (1884) The Anabasis of Alexander. Translated by Chinnock E.J, London, Selwood Printing Works
- Reiss C (2019), Why did Symbian fail, and why couldn’t it attract as a large a developer base as did Android and iOS?, viewed 16 March 2021 ,https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Symbian-fail-and-why-couldn%E2%80%99t-it-attract-as-a-large-a-developer-base-as-did-Android-and-iOS
- Clark, J. H, & Turner, B. (eds) (2018). Brill’s Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society, Leiden, Brill
- Lamberg J.A, Lubinaitė S, Ojala J & Tikkanen H (2019) The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013, Business History
- Quintus Curtius Rufus (1984) The History of Alexander. Translated by John Yardley, London, Penguin Classics
- Statista (2013) Global market share held by Nokia smartphones from 1st quarter 2007 to 2nd quarter 2013, viewed 16 March 2021, <https://www.statista.com/statistics/263438/market-share-held-by-nokia-smartphones-since-2007/>
