Bait
Sun Tzu said, “Hold out baits to the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”
In war, you need to get your opponent to move the way you want them to go. You might make the opponent think you are going to an easy place for them to attack or you might divide your armies and make them think you have an inferior force. One of the ways to do that is with bait. The enemy may see your small inferior army at a distance and come to some pretty wrong conclusions about what you are planning. Their wrong conclusions are good for you.
In business, bait can be used to get a company to do as you wish. For example, a company might offer you a new intellectual advantage to your business. That is the bait. The company may take the idea and go with it. When, in fact, the new advantage may actually be a disguised disadvantage. The company that took the bait will now be at a disadvantage. When they are down, you should cause them as much disorder as possible and put them out of business.
Many companies take bait on new ideas that weaken their core business. For example, a car company may start making tanks because the profit margins look so good. The idea may have been made known to them by a competing car company. The competing car company doesn't want to make tanks. They only want the other company to get distracted from their core business as the competitor takes away market share.
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