Smart strategy counts for more than big talk at Palm Inc.

It is a comforting aspect of the business world that the race is not inevitably won by the biggest and meanest kids on the block. Smaller organizations can often compete with and even outwit their larger counterparts through smart strategy. It is this approach that enabled a comparatively small player, Palm Computing (now Palm Inc.) to get the better of Microsoft for five years. Palm achieved this through intuitive use of what David B. Yoffie and Mary Kwak call a judo strategy: preventing opponents from playing to their full strengths.