Defense was mechanized and attack was not. A.J.P Taylor
This post begins just as it ends. Betwixt the first quote above describing the conditions for battle in WW1 to the last from Lives by Plutarch giving a foil to the genius of Alexander the Great, is just emphatic filler. Everything vital is contained uniquely in those two quotes. My useless contribution takes those two dynamics and draws a desperate analogy in that way that amateur and overconfident historians like myself do to make for a modern parable.
That first quote refers to the excessive and misguided battle plans of World War 1. The defense on both sides was so catastrophic to the environment and to morale that a new type of  machine (and chemical) warfare was implemented and assured enormous mutual destruction and its still present conseququences.
Many ‘accidental’ VC’s and those whom possess the lexicon but not the discipline, when evaluating an opportunity will often bombard its terrain with endless missiles, so, rather than ‘how to win’ they assess ‘how not to lose’. Two very different propositions, different desired outcomes and different concepts of ‘mission accomplished’.
Winning, in the optimal business sense, is quantified by shareholder return. Losing has endless compassionate gradations.
Defense should be utilized to get a favorable forward position without comprimising one’s own position. Defense, doesn’t in itself, win. Even in ill conceived batttles of attrition there has to be forward tactical thrusts.
Winning cannot occur without starting. To propose a theoretical defeat in response to a theoretical start is preposterous. It is mechanized defense.
At some blurry way-station in a company’s travels, between a good idea and a great company, it matures beyond desiring an affirmative consensus and the operators learn to appreciate useful strategy, commentary, obervations of patterns and reasonable critique and thoughtfully disregard the bad . The very best entrepreneurs can quietly differentiate.
Too often the nicest people become Monopoly’s greedy banker and worse, they get lost in the theoretical and not immersed in the reality.
“So would I, if I were Parmenion.” ―Alexander the Great
After Parmenion suggested to him that he should accept Darius III of Persia’s offer of an alliance, the hand of his daughter in marriage, and all Minor Asia, saying “If I were Alexander, I would accept the terms.” – As quoted in Lives by Plutarch