Certain to Win
Boyd did pursue a business degree. He read everything he could get his hands on about the Toyota Production System and came to see it as a realisation of ideas similar to his own. He considered business when developing the final version of his "OODA loop" and in his most recent major briefing on science and technology, Conceptual Spiral. He read and commented on early draughts of this manuscript, but he never wrote about how businesses could be more profitable by implementing his ideas.
Other authors and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd's ideas and suggesting business applications. The OODA loop and its effects on competitors have been described by Keith Hammonds in Fast Company, George Stalk and Tom Hout in Competing Against Time, and Tom Peters most recently in Re-imagine!
They made substantial contributions. Successful businesses, on the other hand, focus on enticing customers rather than influencing competitors. You could apply Boyd to competitors all you wanted, but unless this resulted in customers purchasing your products and services, you've squandered your time and money. If this were all there was to Boyd, he would be considered a minor player in business strategy.
Boyd's focus on war, where "affecting competitors" is the whole idea, has been part of the problem. For nearly 50 years, he was involved in armed conflict, first as a fighter pilot, then as a tactician and instructor of fighter pilots, and finally, after retirement, as a military philosopher. Coram describes (and I have personal experience with this) how his quest consumed Boyd's nearly every waking hour.
It was not a monastic existence, though, since John was above everything else a competitor and loved to argue over beer and cigars far into the night. During most of the 1970s and 80s he worked at the Pentagon, where he could share ideas and debate with other strategists and practitioners of the art of war. The result was the remarkable synthesis we know as Patterns of Conflict.
