John Boyd's Discourse on Winning and Losing

John Boyd (1927-1997) was a military strategist and philosopher—a sort of modern-day Sun Tzu. In addition to revolutionizing fighter plane combat and design, his philosophy of conflict strategy is also applicable to business and politics.

The written works he has left behind consist mostly of some large slide presentations and a short essay. These are archived for free download here: John Boyd Compendium.

Probably the best place to start reading would be the Patterns of Conflict slide presentation. The short essay on Destruction and Creation is also interesting, but will be most useful to those with some background in cognitive psychology (through either eastern philosophy or western science).

Some of the main points from Patterns of Conflict include: