Nice piece by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker about how underdogs come out on top – by breaking the rules:

Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.

The first point is pretty straightforward, and very much along the lines of the ’10,000 hours’ theme in Outliers – that the underdog simply tries harder. Goliath gets lazy and David sneaks up behind him – the hare is beaten by the tortoise.

The second point’s no massive surprise either – Davids often win through guile rather than force – by changing the rules of the game. The status quo works well for the Goliaths – less so for the underdog. So Davids don’t follow the herd. To be a challenger, you have to upset the applecart – it’s all very well trying harder, but you’ll only ever be running uphill unless you start trying to beat the big boys at their own game by playing a different game:

The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analysing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful — in terms of armed might and population — as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time. . . .

What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analysed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win… even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.

It’s not exactly earth shattering news that the underdog has to behave with more wile and cunning than his opponent. But it’s not just simply a case of thinking outside the box. Changing the game takes guts. It’s risky. And having the courage to take risks, and the tenacity to give it your all, still isn’t a guarantee of success. But when doing nothing leads to almost certain defeat, isn’t it better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried?

It’s all very well talking about wanting to be a challenger brand. But to be a successful challenger, rather than one that just talks about it, you have to make some scary choices.

Davids do try harder. Davids are smarter, more nimble, more agile and more sneaky. But most importantly of all, they have a whacking great set of balls.