Via Tom Evslin:

You have some key assumptions about your market, your technology, the state of the world, what’s likely to happen next – especially what’s likely to happen next. And you and your team build a strategy based on those assumptions. You can’t wait until you have all the relevant facts; that’ll never happen (except possibly in business school). Some of the facts are unknowable because they haven’t happened yet. You still need to have a strategy and you need to bet the company on it.

Why? Why not bet half your company as Steve suggests? Because somewhere there’s a competitor who’ll bet all of her company. She’ll take you out because you’re only half committed and she’s willing to go all in.

But what if your company is much bigger than hers? Ten times as big? Then you can bet less than all your company and still have more resources in play and at stake than she does. Right? No. Sounds right but it’s wrong. This is the BIG COMPANY FALLACY. This where the poker analogy breaks down.