Skip to main content

Insertion

Embedding agents or narratives to covertly steer competitors into suboptimal strategic decisions.

"Either through talent or misdirection, encouraging false moves in a competitor."

  • Simon Wardley

🤔 Explanation​

What is Insertion?​

Insertion involves placing or influencing individuals, partnerships, or narratives within a competitor’s ecosystem to distort their decision-making processes.

  • Personnel insertion: hiring or partnering to embed subtle biases.
  • Narrative insertion: seeding hype or misinformation through media and analysts.
  • Partnership insertion: shaping joint ventures or alliances to create diversions.

Why use Insertion?​

This strategy allows you to:

  • Divert competitor resources into unproductive paths.
  • Create uncertainty in rival decision-making.
  • Gain indirect control over market narratives and priorities.

🗺️ Real-World Examples​

Reverse Mentoring in Tech​

A dominant platform hires open-source advocates to slow feature rollouts or introduce bureaucratic hurdles, delaying competitor innovation.

Hypothetical Market Analyst Campaign​

You contract analysts to publish optimistic forecasts about a competitor’s nascent technology, prompting them to over-invest in an unproven niche.

🚦 When to Use / When to Avoid​

🚦 Insertion Strategy Self-Assessment Tool

Find out the strategic fit and organisational readiness by marking each statement as Yes/Maybe/No based on your context. Strategy Assessment Guide.

Landscape and Climate

How well does the strategy fit your context?

  • The map shows a competitor gaining momentum in a key component or capability.
  • They rely on specialized talent or strategic partnerships you can influence.
  • Their decision-making processes are reactive to external narratives.
  • There is opacity in their governance or community structures.

Organisational Readiness (Doctrine)

How capable is your organisation to execute the strategy?

  • We have access to channels for covert influence (hires, media, partnerships).
  • We can maintain plausible deniability to avoid detection.
  • We can monitor the competitor’s internal decisions indirectly.
  • We understand regulatory and ethical boundaries of influence operations.

Assessment and Recommendation

Strategic Fit: Weak. Ability to Execute: Weak.

RECOMMENDATION
Consider alternative strategies or address significant gaps before proceeding.

LowHighStrategic FitHighLowAbility to Execute

Use when​

  • A competitor’s emerging strength needs early distortion.
  • You have channels to embed or influence without quick exposure.
  • Indirect control yields more value than direct competitive moves.

Avoid when​

  • Ethical or legal constraints outweigh the strategic benefit.
  • The competitor’s ecosystem is transparent and resilient.
  • Detection would cause unacceptable reputation or regulatory harm.

🎯 Leadership​

Core challenge​

Maintaining covert operations while measuring impact and avoiding detection or blowback.

Key leadership skills required​

  • Covert operations planning
  • Narrative and media management
  • Intelligence gathering
  • Risk and crisis management

Ethical considerations​

Covert influence can breach trust and legal boundaries. Leaders must assess long-term brand and regulatory impacts.

📋 How to Execute​

  1. Identify the target competitor and strategic inflection points.
  2. Develop an influence plan (personnel, media, partnerships).
  3. Insert agents or narratives with plausible roles.
  4. Monitor competitor reactions through public signals or insiders.
  5. Adapt and amplify successful diversions.
  6. Withdraw assets gracefully to minimize detection.

📈 Measuring Success​

  • Competitor shifts away from optimal strategic paths.
  • Resources allocated by competitor to low-value initiatives.
  • Level of uncertainty or delay introduced in their roadmap.
  • Minimal detection and exposure of operations.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls and Warning Signs​

Exposure Risks​

Discovery leads to legal action, reputational damage, or regulatory scrutiny.

Counter-Intelligence​

Competitors can feed false signals to mislead or detect our operations.

Overreach​

Excessive insertion activities increase complexity and detection likelihood.

Ineffective Influence​

Target may ignore inserted assets or narratives, wasting resources.

🧠 Strategic Insights​

Evolution Stage and Fluidity​

Insertion tactics are often most potent when applied to components or strategies in the mid-stages of their evolution, specifically transitioning from custom-built to product or even early rental services. During these phases, decisions are still fluid, standards are not yet fully set, and organizations are more susceptible to external narratives or influences that can steer them towards ultimately suboptimal paths before they achieve a more robust, commoditized state. The uncertainty inherent in these evolutionary stages creates fertile ground for doubt and misdirection.

The "Insider Threat" Amplification​

Beyond the direct placement of an agent, a more nuanced form of insertion involves identifying and subtly influencing existing individuals within a target organization. These "unwitting agents" might be disgruntled, ideologically aligned with an alternative viewpoint, or simply susceptible to sophisticated social engineering. The process can involve careful grooming, appealing to cognitive biases (like confirmation bias or authority bias), and providing seemingly credible information that steers their actions and advice in a desired direction. This approach is often lower risk and can yield more authentic, and therefore more damaging, internal diversions than deploying an obvious outsider.

Digital Vectors and AI-Driven Narratives​

Modern insertion strategies increasingly leverage digital channels. Social media bots, AI-generated content (including deepfakes), and targeted disinformation campaigns can create or amplify misleading narratives at unprecedented scale and speed. The anonymity and complex technical nature of these attacks make attribution difficult, allowing manipulators to shape perceptions or sow discord with relative impunity. Furthermore, data analytics can identify vulnerable demographics or key influencers within a competitor's ecosystem, enabling highly targeted narrative insertion that exploits existing societal or organizational fissures.

Indirect Strategic Sabotage: The "Second-Order K.O."​

Insertion isn't always about directly influencing a major strategic decision. Highly sophisticated plays aim for "second-order" sabotage by targeting crucial enablers of a competitor's strategy. This could involve inserting subtly flawed code into an open-source dependency, influencing technical standards bodies towards specifications that create long-term disadvantages for rivals, or promoting internal policies (e.g., HR, R&D funding criteria) that slowly stifle innovation or misallocate critical resources. These are often long-game strategies where the negative impact accumulates gradually and is harder to trace back to a deliberate external insertion.

Ecosystem Vulnerabilities and Supply Chain Weakening​

Competitors rarely operate in isolation. Insertion can target vulnerabilities within their broader ecosystem, such as key suppliers, distribution partners, or even large customers. By inserting agents or narratives that create friction, sow distrust, or introduce inefficiencies in these relationships, an aggressor can weaken the competitor indirectly. For instance, spreading rumors about a competitor's financial instability to its critical component suppliers might cause them to tighten credit terms or delay shipments, thereby disrupting the competitor's operations without a direct confrontation.

The "Host Immune Response" and Blowback Dynamics​

A detected or even strongly suspected insertion attempt can trigger a powerful "immune response" within the target organization. This might involve heightened security, increased internal scrutiny, and a shift towards a more insular, distrustful culture, which can itself be counterproductive. Ironically, such a response can sometimes strengthen a competitor's resolve or expose the inserter's hand. There's also the significant risk of the inserted asset being identified and "turned" – used to feed disinformation back to the original aggressor. The ethical and reputational fallout from a publicly exposed insertion campaign can far outweigh any strategic gains, potentially leading to severe regulatory penalties or market alienation.

Cultural Due Diligence and Resilience as Defense​

Beyond overt counter-intelligence, a strong defense against insertion lies in fostering a resilient organizational culture. This includes encouraging critical thinking, robust internal debate, and psychological safety that empowers employees to question assumptions and challenge directives, regardless of their source. Implementing practices like "red teaming" for key strategic initiatives, where an internal team actively tries to pick apart a plan, can help uncover vulnerabilities to manipulation. A culture that values transparency and diverse perspectives is inherently harder to infiltrate successfully.

Counterplay Opportunities: Transparency and Verification​

While difficult, competitors can mitigate hidden influences by fostering open forums, transparent decision-making processes, and rigorous third-party verification of critical information or partnerships. Requiring multiple independent sources for strategic intelligence and building a culture that questions "too good to be true" opportunities or narratives can act as a strong deterrent.

Synergies with Other Disruptive Tactics​

Insertion is rarely a standalone play. Its effectiveness is often amplified when combined with other strategies like Misdirection (to create noise and divert attention from the actual insertion point), Fragmentation (to create internal divisions that an inserted agent can exploit), or even Designed to Fail (where an inserted narrative convinces a competitor to adopt a flawed initiative).

❓ Key Questions to Ask​

  • Target Selection: Which competitor controls components critical to our map?
  • Access: Can we infiltrate people or media channels effectively?
  • Deniability: How will we mask our involvement?
  • Impact Tracking: What signals will indicate our influence is working?
  • Withdrawal Plan: How will we remove inserted assets without leaving traces?

🔀 Related Strategies​

⛅ Relevant Climatic Patterns​

📚 Further Reading & References​