Taking a Page From Ellison’s Playbook
Back in 2000, someone from the database giant Oracle was caught sifting through the garbage bins of its rival, Microsoft. When asked by excited reporters about this astonishing, though legal, revelation, CEO Larry Ellison blinked and said, Yeah, so what?
It was vintage Ellison, running a calculated Crazy Ivan, an attacking play found on the Playmaker’s Standard Table of Influence Strategies.
Ellison’s skills for diffusing scandal may be called upon again as the billionairre’s rivals in America’s Cup sailing — a Swiss ownership group called SNG — have reportedly caught a member of Ellison’s BWM Oracle syndicate photographing their super-secret sloops — a no-no in the arcane world of America’s Cup racing and in Switzerland to boot.
The object lesson, we’re giddy to blog, is that playmakers abound on water as well as land. Reported by the New York Times yesterday, a spokesman for BWM Oracle tossed a Red Herring onto the public poker table: ‘[SNG] is once again trying to avoid the Court’s clear judgment by making trumped-up allegations that have nothing to do with the matter at hand.’ He was referring to legal maneuvers that have punctuated this latest installation of America’s Cup lore.
The BWM Oracle surrogate quickly reminded media and Cup followers that, legal observation of competitors is common practice in the America’s Cup and other major sporting events.” He was referring to the Swiss’s recent shadowing of BMW Oracle’s speedy new trimaran design a sure threat to the Swiss. Hypocrites the spokesperson was meaning to say.
How did the Swiss counter? Perhaps they’d watched Ellison in 2000. They ran a Crazy Ivan. Yeah so what? After all the viewing of a boat on public waterways is no more illegal than the reading of someone’s public trash. It’s out there for anyone to see.
And what of the accused a Frenchman named Jean Antoine Bonnaveau? His play was perhaps the most skilled a Lantern to inoculate himself and implicate his employer: “I was officially authorized by my company to carry out this reconnaissance.’
As they say in sailing Bonnaveau might be off the boat but he’s no fool and perhaps he’ll stay out of jail. The larger question now is what plays will Team Ellison run to keep the Swiss out of the courts.
Post by Alan Kelly
Photo credit: www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=6787