> There are business books applying its lessons to office politics and corporate strategy. Many Japanese companies make the book required reading for their key executives. The book is also popular among Western business management, who have turned to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive business situations. It has also been applied to the field of education.
Here's where I start talking out of my ass: If you think about it, aren't generals the original managers? They had to coordinate the actions of thousands of people. Sometimes hundreds of thousands. They have to delegate to their subordinates because it'd be impossible to micromanage everything. Also, I think it's more than a coincidence that the quote seemed to fit so well. Outsourcing is hiring mercenaries.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Five-Rings-Miyamoto-Musashi/dp/15... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-War-Liddell-Hart/dp/0195014766... [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Application_outs...
Eh, that depends on your ability to generalize some of its lessons to the world you live in, which I'm sure it beyond a lot of people at the usual stages in their lives when they're starting up companies, especially giving the distractions of that process. But as the author emphasizes in his his very first point, your core team of people is the single most critical thing, and paraphrasing Paul Graham in one of his essays (which the author generally and perhaps specifically recommends), if you use average "stuff", you're likely to get an average result, and the average result for a startup is FAILURE!
Plenty of interpersonal things can be directly illuminated by The Art of War, lots of that involves threats subtle or more direct, the lesson about "death ground" is vital, etc. But you might as well add the roughly equally short The Prince by Machiavelli and no doubt other books, at least these two are short (and make sure you get a good translation of The Art of War, I wouldn't trust any that weren't done by a military officer, and therefore I recommend Samuel B. Griffiths' version: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195014766/).
More generally, how to you gain the wisdom to comprehend and put into place the lessons the author is teaching, especially if you're a callow youth? Reading (and rereading) "the classics" has long been a method for that, and one that works for me.
Emphasis on the re-reading, never stop learning, e.g. I'm on perhaps my 3rd pass of Churchill's The Gathering Storm, about the post-WWI period, it ends with him being appointed Prime Minister as the Nazi blitzkrieg falls upon the Low countries and France. First pass was in the '80s, 2nd I can't remember, and now I'm re-reading it about to turn 56 and learning even more from it, having, for example, learned a lot more about history, government and war all though the years.