The Underdog Advantage, Revised Edition

Why Underdogs Win You and your business are in a constant battle for the hearts, minds and wallets of today's consumers. To succeed in this age of increasing clutter and competition, you've got to learn to develop the same opportunistic and aggressive strategies and tactics used by successful underdogs in politics, business and on the battlefield. Never settle for anything less than the win, the whole win and nothing but the win. The underdog or insurgent, values and exploits speed and mobility over size and scope. In this way, the insurgent is compelled by vision, not heritageâ by the future, not the past. The single dynamic separating the incumbent and the insurgent most dramatically is change. Incumbents hate change, because change implies disruption of all that has made them successful. Insurgents, by contrast, love change because change means opportunity. Change is their goal, while status quo is the goal of the incumbent. It s the same in politics, sports and warfare. For over thirty years, we have studied and built our strategic model on the foundation of insurgency. Since the 1980s, and our work with Steven Jobs at Apple, we have used an insurgent political model to help companies and their leaders develop more effective competitive, communication and innovation strategies. We preach and practice insurgent strategy. But, importantly, we don t teach insurgent strategy as much as we help unleash it. The instincts for insurgency exist within almost all organizations. And our job is to identify it, activate it, focus and energize it.