Changing the Rules of the Game

Good article from Gladwell in the New Yorker about how disadvantaged competitors win by changing the way the game is played. Takes examples from basketball (the full court press), military history and the biblical story of David & Goliath. The most interesting point isn't that obvious one, i.e. that weaker competitors can still win if they find new ways to compete, it's just how often they win when they adopt this strategy.

Looking at the military history of battles between seriously outmatched opponents, political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft found that when the underdogs adopted novel strategies, they increased their likelihood fo winning from 28.5 to 63.6 percent. Not bad considering he defined underdogs as groups whose opponents were at least ten times stronger in terms of armed might and population.