International Harvester—one of America's oldest manufacturing giants—hemorrhaged cash. The farming equipment division that built the company for 150 years became a liability overnight.
I was a mainframe programmer when the crisis hit. I watched a Fortune 100 company nearly die.
Then I watched them execute the most brutal competitive strategy I've ever seen.
They taught me one rule: When your competitor needs the same widget you do, buy every single one. Starve them. Win.
That strategy saved Navistar. I used it to survive 25 years of corporate collapses. And I'm watching it play out right now at nation-state scale.
Here's the framework.
Farm subsidies collapsed in 1985.
International Harvester's farming equipment division—the core business since the 1800s—couldn't survive without government support. Farmers stopped buying. Revenue cratered.
By 1986, IH sold the entire farming division to Tenneco, who handed it to J.I. Case.
The company gave non-essential personnel termination notices with one option: find another position inside the company or leave.
Sound familiar? It's exactly what DOGE is doing right now—cutting departments, forcing lean operations, betting on survival through efficiency.
We went lean. We went mean. And we went all-in on offense.
During the crisis, IH's leadership did something most companies never do during survival mode: they studied why they were losing.
They brought us into a conference room and showed us a video.
W. Edwards Deming presenting his manufacturing quality system to Japanese executives.
We watched in silence as Deming explained the total quality management framework he'd offered to U.S. manufacturers after World War II.
The U.S. rejected it. Called it impractical. Said American manufacturing was already the best in the world.
Japan adopted it completely. Built their entire industrial strategy around it.
By 1985, Toyota was eating Detroit's lunch. Japanese manufacturing quality became the global standard. American companies were scrambling to figure out what happened.
What happened was simple: We rejected the framework that would've made us dominant forever.
Japan didn't just adopt Deming's plan. They weaponized it. Continuous improvement. Statistical process control. Predictive maintenance before "AI" existed.
That video changed everything for me. It wasn't about having better ideas. It was about executing better than your competitors on the fundamentals.
IH leadership made a decision: exit the dying farming market, rebrand, and go all-in on trucking.
Why trucking?
Because the trucking industry is the heartbeat of America. Every product in every store moves on a truck. Recession-proof. Essential infrastructure.
And IH had 800 truck dealerships already in place.
The rebrand launched in 1986: International Harvester became Navistar International.
Same company. Different focus. Total commitment.
But rebranding doesn't save companies. Strategy execution does.
This is where I came in.
I started as a mainframe programmer. After the farming division sold, I became the Personal Computer Development Lead for technology implementation across the dealer network.
They gave me 3 people and one instruction: "Hire until we tell you to stop."
I built a team of 15 staff plus 15 consultants. We became the Applications Development Manager group for all personal computer systems across the corporation.
Our mission was simple: Put technology in the hands of 800 truck dealerships and make it a competitive advantage competitors couldn't match.
We created a distributed computing system supplying truck dealers with HP laptops—cutting edge for 1986.
But the hardware wasn't the advantage. The data strategy was.
We tracked Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) for every truck component across every customer.
That data let us do something competitors couldn't: predict problems before they happened.
A truck is a $250,000 piece of equipment. Downtime costs thousands per day.
Our system let dealerships call truck owners and fleet managers before failures occurred. Proactive service. Scheduled maintenance. Zero surprise breakdowns.
Competitors were reactive. We were predictive.
But we didn't stop there.
We built algorithms that calculated the exact moment when a truck owner should trade in their vehicle based on Lowest Cost of Ownership.
The system factored:
Then we'd call the customer: "Your current truck hits optimal trade-in value in 90 days. Here's your financing and insurance package, ready to go."
Competitors were selling trucks. We were selling total fleet optimization.
We couldn't use traditional development cycles. The company was in crisis. Speed was survival.
So I developed RAD (Rapid Application Development) and JAD (Joint Application Development) methodologies for the corporation.
Agile development before "Agile" had a manifesto.
We iterated in weeks, not months. We involved end users in development, not after deployment. We shipped working software while competitors were still in requirements gathering.
My team became Level 2 support for the help desk. We didn't just build systems—we lived with them.
The company put the entire corporation's digital transformation on our backs and said: "WIN."
We won.
Here's what most business case studies leave out: the human cost of transformation.
The U.S. government launched an initiative called Workforce 2000. The analysis was simple: for the economy to grow, corporate America needed to open doors for minorities.
I was one of the chosen few who came through that door.
I was an African-American executive during the Workforce 2000 era, doing plant tours in Indianapolis—the national headquarters of the KKK.
Let that sink in.
Navistar's manufacturing plant was in Indianapolis, Indiana. The city where the Ku Klux Klan had its national headquarters.
I had to tour that plant. Present technology roadmaps. Work with plant managers.
Picture this: An African-American executive from the "I Have a Dream" era walking a manufacturing floor where KKK members and Black workers operated side by side.
They were shocked to see me.
I had a job to do. Technology to deploy. A company to save.
The discomfort was mutual. The work got done anyway.
Navistar even recruited an African-American GM executive to join the C-suite. He couldn't handle it. The pressure broke him.
I stayed. Not because I was braver. Because I understood something: Crisis doesn't care about comfort. Survival requires execution regardless of conditions.
The "widget warfare" strategy wasn't a metaphor. It was literal operational doctrine.
During a team-building exercise designed to teach us how to manage outside contracts, we learned the core principle:
When you and your competitor both need the same resource to execute, buy all of it. Starve them. Win.
This wasn't abstract strategy. This was purchasing doctrine.
Navistar's parts purchasing power was equivalent to Walmart's retail buying power.
When we identified a critical component that other truck manufacturers (Freightliner, Peterbilt, Kenworth, Mack) also needed, we'd do the calculation:
If the math worked, we bought everything.
Not because we needed it all immediately. Because denying access to competitors created more value than the carrying cost.
Competitors had three options:
All three options slowed them down.
Speed is survival in crisis. We stayed fast. They got slower.
We studied Toyota and Ford obsessively.
Toyota's advantage wasn't just Deming's quality framework. It was supply chain control.
They owned their suppliers. Not just contracts—equity stakes in the companies making their components.
When Toyota needed capacity, their suppliers expanded. When Toyota needed innovation, their suppliers invested. When Toyota needed lower costs, their suppliers found efficiencies.
Ford? They played suppliers against each other. Short-term cost savings. Long-term strategic vulnerability.
We adopted the Toyota model: lock in strategic suppliers, starve competitors of critical resources, control the entire value chain.
Most corporate turnaround stories end with bankruptcy or acquisition.
Not this one.
Navistar still exists.
On October 1, 2024—nearly 40 years after the farming division collapse—Navistar rebranded again.
New name: International Motors, LLC.
New logo. New corporate identity. Same foundational strategy.
Reinvention is the culture of manufacturing.
Companies that survive don't just adapt once. They adapt continuously. They rebuild constantly. They starve competitors relentlessly.
The widget warfare framework I learned in 1986 is the same strategy I'm watching play out in 2025:
The widgets changed. The strategy didn't.
Here's the actual framework. Not theory—operational steps.
Widget = any scarce resource required for execution.
Not "important resources." Critical resources. The ones that:
At Navistar, widgets included:
Today, widgets might be:
Map who needs what.
We built spreadsheets tracking:
The goal: find widgets where buying capacity hurts competitors more than it costs you.
Don't wait for scarcity. Create it.
When we identified a strategic component:
Competitors called this "aggressive." We called it survival.
Controlling widgets is meaningless unless you execute faster because of it.
Our HP laptop deployment advantage wasn't just having the hardware. It was:
We turned widget control into differentiated customer value.
When you control critical widgets, competitors face only bad options:
Option A: Wait
Option B: Pay Premium
Option C: Substitute
All three options slow them down. Speed is the competitive advantage.
Widget warfare isn't one move. It's a continuous strategy.
As markets evolve, new widgets emerge. As competitors adapt, new vulnerabilities appear.
We didn't stop at components. We moved to:
Every advantage compounds.
This framework isn't historical. It's playing out today.
BRICS nations are debating currency alternatives.
The U.S. is locking up critical minerals from ASEAN member countries and Australia.
Widgets: Rare earths, lithium, cobalt—required for AI data centers, Bitcoin mining, semiconductor manufacturing.
BRICS has ambition. The U.S. is buying widgets.
[Full analysis: BRICS Currency Plans vs Trump's ASEAN Mineral Strategy →]
OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic competing for AI researchers.
Widget: PhD-level AI talent with transformer architecture expertise.
Compensation packages hitting $1M+ signing bonuses. Exclusive non-compete agreements. Equity stakes preventing talent mobility.
Same strategy. Different decade.
TSMC, Samsung, Intel fighting for manufacturing dominance.
Widget: EUV lithography machines—only one company (ASML) makes them, limited production capacity.
Nations are securing allocation years in advance. Export controls prevent competitor access.
Widget warfare at nation-state scale.
Grammarly just rebranded as a multi-product company: Grammarly + Coda + Superhuman Mail + Superhuman Go AI assistant.
Widget: Productivity tool mindshare and integration points.
They're not replacing Grammarly. They're buying up every productivity widget—writing, docs, email, calendar, AI assistance.
Starve competitors (Notion, Slack, Microsoft 365) of standalone category dominance.
The framework is simple. Execution is brutal.
Here's why most companies can't do this:
Navistar didn't start widget warfare after the farming collapse. We intensified it.
The infrastructure was already there: purchasing relationships, supplier networks, data systems.
Crisis revealed the strategy's value. But we'd been building capability for years.
Most companies wait until desperation forces action. By then, competitors already control the widgets.
Finance teams optimize for lowest cost per unit.
Widget warfare optimizes for strategic control regardless of unit cost.
When we bought excess component capacity, CFOs questioned the carrying costs.
When competitors couldn't get those components and lost market share, the CFOs understood.
Short-term cost savings create long-term strategic vulnerability.
Most companies react to competitor moves.
Widget warfare requires anticipating competitor needs and preemptively denying access.
We didn't wait for competitors to bid on supplier capacity. We locked it up before they realized they needed it.
Offense wins. Defense just delays losing.
Controlling widgets means nothing if you don't execute faster because of it.
We had HP laptops and MTBF data. That was infrastructure.
The weapon was predictive maintenance, LCO analytics, and proactive service calls.
Infrastructure is necessary. Weaponization is sufficient.
Widget warfare requires uncomfortable decisions:
Most executives lack the courage to execute at this level.
I learned this framework during a corporate near-death experience.
You don't learn widget warfare in business school. You learn it when execution is the only thing between survival and bankruptcy.
When International Harvester collapsed, we didn't have the luxury of theoretical strategy debates.
We had one mandate: Win. Now. Or the company dies.
That clarity changes everything.
Lesson 1: Comfort is expensive.
The Indianapolis plant tours were uncomfortable. The racial tension was real. The job got done anyway.
Most executives optimize for comfort. Survival requires optimizing for results regardless of discomfort.
Lesson 2: Speed beats perfection.
Our RAD/JAD methodologies weren't perfect. They were fast.
Competitors built better systems. We deployed working systems while they were still planning.
Lesson 3: Control beats efficiency.
Buying excess supplier capacity wasn't efficient. It was strategically dominant.
Efficiency is for stable markets. Control is for survival.
Lesson 4: Execution beats innovation.
Deming's framework wasn't new. Japan didn't invent it. They executed it while we debated it.
The U.S. had the innovative idea. Japan won because they executed better.
You're facing one of three scenarios:
Revenue declining. Market shifting. Competitors gaining ground.
You need widget warfare immediately.
Identify the 3-5 critical resources your competitors need. Buy them. Starve competitors. Win.
You don't have time for analysis paralysis. Execute.
Business is good. Competitors are visible but not threatening.
This is when you build widget warfare capability.
Lock in strategic suppliers. Hire critical talent. Secure exclusive partnerships.
Build the infrastructure now so you can weaponize it when crisis hits.
You're winning. Market leadership secured.
This is when competitors are building widget warfare against you.
Audit your dependencies. Where are you vulnerable? What widgets do you need that competitors could deny?
Defense requires offense. Control what they need before they control what you need.
Once you see widget warfare, you see it everywhere:
The strategy doesn't change. Only the widgets change.
I learned this at Navistar in 1986. It worked then. It works now. It'll work in 2050.
Because the fundamental logic is timeless: Control scarcity. Deny competitor access. Execute faster. Win.
Navistar taught me something most business books miss: Survival isn't a one-time transformation. It's continuous reinvention.
International Harvester → Navistar International (1986)Navistar International → International Motors LLC (2024)
Same company. 40 years. Multiple rebrands. Still winning.
Why? Because reinvention is the culture.
Not change management. Not digital transformation. Reinvention as operational doctrine.
When markets shift, reinvent. When technology evolves, reinvent. When competitors adapt, reinvent.
Widget warfare isn't about winning once. It's about maintaining competitive advantage through continuous strategic control.
I left Navistar in 1991. The company survived. The lessons stayed with me.
Over the next 25 years, I survived:
Every time, I used the same framework: Identify critical widgets. Control access. Execute faster. Win.
At Illinois Bell during the AT&T breakup: Widget was telecom infrastructure knowledge. I controlled it.
At Y2K infrastructure projects: Widget was disaster recovery expertise. I controlled it.
At every company facing disruption: Widget was pattern recognition from surviving previous crises. I controlled it.
The framework scales. The widgets change. The strategy wins.
We're entering a period of massive disruption:
This is 1985 again. Different crisis. Same opportunity.
Companies optimizing for stability will die. Companies executing widget warfare will dominate.
The widgets today:
Whoever controls these widgets writes the next decade.
This isn't theoretical. This is operational.
Here's how to start:
Map your critical dependencies:
Create a widget priority matrix:
Focus on Priority 1 widgets exclusively.
Research competitor supply chains:
This isn't corporate espionage. This is competitive intelligence.
Develop acquisition plans for Priority 1 widgets:
Budget for strategic control, not just immediate needs.
Widget control is meaningless without weaponization:
Speed is the competitive advantage. Control enables speed.
Markets evolve. New widgets emerge. Competitor strategies adapt.
Widget warfare is continuous, not episodic.
Quarterly widget audits. Monthly competitor intelligence updates. Weekly execution velocity checks.
This becomes operational culture, not a project.
This framework applies across industries and decades. I've documented specific applications:
BRICS Currency Plans vs Trump's ASEAN Mineral Strategy →]Current geopolitical widget warfare: critical minerals and tech talent
[The UNIX Wars: How Tech Standards Became Strategic Weapons →] (Coming soon)1980s technology battle I witnessed firsthand at Uniforum
[The Browser Wars: Widget Warfare at Internet Scale →] (Coming soon)How platform control determined the internet's future
[Company Rebrands That Won vs. Those That Failed →] (Coming soon)Grammarly's multi-product widget strategy vs. failed rebrand attempts
Each article applies this framework to a specific competitive situation.
The pattern is always the same: Control widgets. Starve competitors. Execute faster. Win.
I survived International Harvester's collapse by learning widget warfare under crisis conditions.
You don't need a crisis to start executing this framework.
But if you wait for crisis to force action, your competitors will already control the widgets you need.
Crisis = revenue opportunity. But only if you position before it's obvious.
Most executives won't act on this until they're desperate.
You're reading this now.
P.S. I walked manufacturing floors in KKK headquarters territory as an African-American executive because widget warfare required it. If you're not willing to be uncomfortable for competitive advantage, this framework isn't for you. If you're willing to execute regardless of conditions, let's talk.
Fractional CMO & CTO | Empowering $1M-$10M manufacturers, logistics, service, and retail leaders to transform brand crisis into revenue engines. While others panic, my clients thrive.
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