The Underdog

by Will on May 5, 2009

Gladwell’s latest article is a fun excursion, replete with guerrilla tactics, the press defense, and a few egregious over-generalizations. Read the whole thing here.

And then enjoy some Spoon:



Tagged as: Malcolm Gladwell, Spoon

Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.

{ 3 comments }

1 Mike May 5, 2009 at 12:57 pm

interesting article, with nice examples. But isn’t Gladwell’s basic point lifted straight from Nietzsche? (David:Goliath :: master morality : slave morality)

Also, youtube embed is broken

2 Will May 5, 2009 at 1:01 pm

Mike -

Thanks for the heads-up. That’s an interesting point, though I think Gladwell’s larger argument is purely descriptive: underdog tactics are effective but rarely used because they’re so much more difficult to implement.

3 Mike May 5, 2009 at 1:13 pm

Yeah, you’re right… it might not be his overarching argument, but I was struck by the section what ends with “It isn’t surprising that the tournament directors found Eurisko’s strategies beyond the pale. It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.” I was totally on board with Gladwell until then.

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