It’s the greatest comeback in sports history.  It was the 2013 America’s Sailing Cup, and Oracle Team USA was dead in the water.

Down 8-1 against Emirates Team New Zealand, they needed to win eight straight races to take the championship. New Zealand needed just one more victory. The world had written Oracle off.

Then, everything changed. Oracle’s team adjusted their strategy and won eight races in a row, pulling off the greatest comeback in sailing history.

This wasn’t luck. It was Larry Ellison’s playbook in action.

“I have had all the disadvantages required for success.” – Larry Ellison.

Most people don’t even know what Oracle does. “Something about servers and databases.” Yet it’s a 500 billion dollar company. That’s been the pattern: Larry Ellison gets an idea. Oracle runs with it and does great. Ellison checks out for a while to go sailing or play tennis. Oracle finds itself in trouble, losing market share. Ellison comes back with another genius idea and makes Oracle win again.

Most recently, when the President of America was announcing the 500 billion dollar AI investment, it was Larry Ellison standing next to him. Not the CEO of Google or Facebook who have actually invested billions in AI. Ellison always finds a way to pivot and make way.

How does Ellison win from being an underdog so consistently?

Ellison plays chess, not a running race.

Most people treat business and competition like a sprint. Move fast, be first, win early. But Ellison sees it like a chess board. His greatest ability is taking a step back and seeing the whole board.

He marks the enemy pieces. And visualizes where they will struggle next. Where will AWS struggle after 5 years? What will be the bottleneck for AI growth?

He can take a step back as well as think forward. It’s this dual ability that enables him to come from behind and win.

Amazon and AWS had an insurmountable lead in cloud computing. They were more than 2 years ahead before Oracle even got started. But Ellison didn’t panic. He took a step back to deconstruct AWS. And then thought in the future: where will they struggle the most? When he realized it was enterprise security and database integration, that’s where he positioned Oracle at.

Ellison exploits his competition’s blind spots.

A crucial part of Ellison’s strategy is knowing his enemy better than they know themselves. But he doesn’t just study what they’re doing. He looks for what they’re not doing.

• IBM dominated enterprise computing but ignored databases. So in the 1980s, Oracle made databases their entire business.
  
• Microsoft built Windows but overlooked enterprise software. So in the 1990s, Oracle expanded into it.
  
• Amazon AWS became a cloud giant but lacked deep database expertise. So in the past few years, Oracle repositioned itself as the best database company in the cloud.

Ellison pivots based on his competitors blind spots. But that’s not enough for him. 

“Winning is not enough. All others must lose.” – Larry Ellison

This is what makes Ellison ruthless. He is not happy by merely winning. He needs others to lose. He plays the entire board: offense as well as defence. It’s different from winning a race – which is all about moving forward faster. For Ellison, sometimes winning means slowing down your opponent so that they cannot move forward.

Ellison uses lawsuits and legal battles to slow down his competition. All so that they remain distracted, while he pivots. They famously filed a lawsuit against Google over Java – a technology Oracle acquired, they didn’t even make it in house. Google had to spend years in the legal arena.

Slowing down the opposition.

During America’s Sailing Cup, when the Oracle team was trailing, they took a postponement. That’s like a timeout – which allowed Oracle to delay the start of the afternoon race to the next racing day – which fortunately was after 48 hours.

Over the 2 days, Oracle team went through videos of what the Emirates team was doing differently. And more importantly, what they were not doing.

Emirates team had mastered downwind foiling – a breakthrough method of lifting the boat out of the water to gain incredible speed. This had allowed them to crush Oracle team 8-1. 

Their whole boat was designed for downwind foiling. Over the 2 day break, Oracle team deconstructed them and figured a risky strategy: upwind foiling. Something the Emirates team could not do because of their boat design. 

Oracle figured out how to lift the boat out of the water even against the wind. They dramatically reduced their drag and increased their speed in all conditions. Which allowed them to win the next 8 races!

Action Summary:

• Once every quarter or so, take a step back. And see all the players on the whole board: your clients and employees and competitors and suppliers. 

• Study what they are doing, but equally important – study what they are not doing.

• Then pivot and reposition yourself. Do what others cannot. And you will win.