I saw it happen only once. It was in a boardroom in Stuttgart, not a chessboard in Moscow or the control room of a Typhoon-class submarine. The company I was consulting for, a mid-sized automotive parts manufacturer, was on the verge of being annihilated by a larger competitor. They had launched a aggressive price war, mirroring our key product lines, and our leadership was in a panic. The consensus was to retreat, cut costs, and protect our core market-a defensive, reactionary move straight from a generic business textbook.