CONCEPT
Strategic Repositioning
Ohmae's prescription for corporate response to a cost-structure change: identify which assets transcend the change, divest those that depend on it, and rebuild strategic architecture around the durable assets — the only coherent alternative to the retrenchment reflex.
When a cost structure changes and a competitive border dissolves, corporations face a binary choice. They can retrench — cutting costs, reducing headcount, defending existing positions — which feels decisive and produces immediate financial results, and which is almost always wrong. Or they can reposition — reallocating resources from devalued assets to appreciating ones, rebuilding strategic architecture around the new competitive geometry. Retrenchment sacrifices the strategic assets (people, relationships, ecosystem investments) that are the only basis for competitive recovery. Repositioning requires the harder discipline of distinguishing which assets are made of the dissolved cost and which transcend it, and the courage to act on the distinction before the market fully prices it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Ohmae noted across his career that the most dangerous moment for a corporation is not the crisis itself but the period immediately after, when retrenchment pressure is strongest. The logic of retrenchment is intuitive: revenues are falling,