Crush Adidas. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras give this as Nike’s goal in the 1960s. Philip Morris had a similar goal in the 1950s: “Knock off RJR as the number one tobacco company in the world.”
The examples come from their 1996 article “Building Your Company’s Vision” in the Harvard Business Review. The two authors call such goals “common-enemy BHAGs.” BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. They write that common-enemy goals “involve David-versus-Goliath thinking.”