The Art of ‘Ware [version 2.0] by Bruce F. Webster
[Copyright (c) 1995, 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Last updated: 04/30/08]
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This book grew out of an incident in the early days of Pages Software Inc (1990-95). During an engineering meeting, Bruce Henderson — who had spent several years in the US Marine Corps — quoted a maxim from Suntzu pingfa (Sun Tzu’s The Art of War), a book with which I had been familiar for years, and which I quoted at Pages from time to time. Henderson’s comment set me to thinking about how applicable Sun Tzu was to competing in the technology and information industries. I wen through the first chapter of Suntzu pingfa and started rephrasing Sun Tzu’s maxims to that end. Before I had finished, I was convinced that there was something of real worth there, and I decided to press on and do all of Suntzu pingfa, thinking that the result might be of worth to others in the industry.
What I didn’t expect was that it would be more then three years before I finished the book. It wasn’t the writing per se that took so long; it was that my time was consumed by work at Pages — a start-up software venture — and what spare time I had went to my family. I think the book is much better for the time it took. The ideas inside might have been able to stew and simmer for a few years, during which I was up to my eyeballs in the topics to be addressed.
It has now been 12 years since I completed the first edition of The Art of ‘Ware. I am gratified that the maxims themselves have held up well in those intervening years, especially given how the industry has changed. However, I found that many of the examples I used in the commentary — while still accurate — are so old that many of those who would read this book wouldn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about. I also note with interest that it is now Apple and Google that appear to be most successfully applying the principles laid out by Sun Tzu, while Microsoft appears to have forgotten what it once knew.
The technique of producing this book was straightforward, though not easy. I worked with several different English translations of Suntzu pingfa. I would study a given maxim in all the versions simultaneously, determine what the essential concept was, then use that was the basis for a parallel maxim appropriate to the topic at hand. Of course, not all the translators agreed in their interpretation of a given maxim; sometimes they differed radically. In those cases, I was guided by the essential concept and how well it fit into the appropriate contemporary situation. Likewise, there were disagreements among the translators as to the ordering of some maxims, and did some rearranging to clarify the structure and to reduce unnecessary redundancy.
While I did drop or move the occasional maxim, the maxims in each chapter of The Art of ‘Ware generally match in order and concept those found in Suntzu pingfa. The biggest exception: Chapter 11, where I did wholesale rearranging of maxims to produce a more coherent (and less redundant) presentation. You might find it more interesting to compare my order with that found in a more traditional translation of Suntzu pingfa.
I hope you enjoyed the book and that it’s helped you towards more success, however you might define that. If you’ve got comments, criticisms, or other feedback, please drop me a line; details are in the next section (“An Invitation”). In the meantime, take care, and I’ll see you on the bitstream.
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