Acerca dos "underdogs"

Estão a ver o cabeçalho deste blogue?
A sua razão de ser está nestes postais:

• "Golias estava invicto até ter encontrado o pequeno David" (parte I, parte II e parte III)
• "Adeptos e promotores da concorrência imperfeita"

Agora, descubro que Malcolm Gladwell  está a terminar um livro sobre os "underdogs" que triunfam sobre os Golias deste mundo. É um tema que me fascina, educado, habituado, condicionado a pensar, durante os anos da minha pré-adolescência (1974-1979), na lengalenga marxista, os grandes ficam cada vez mais grandes. Descobri, ao longo da minha vida profissional com entusiasmo, com surpresa, com UAU, que os pequenos podem triunfar, que os pequenos podem fazer a diferença, que os pequenos é que abrem a fronteira. Ontem li:

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"In his book How the Weak Win Wars, Political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft looked at every war fought over the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 percent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. In conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful as its opponent—in terms of armed might and population—the weaker side prevailed almost a third of the time.
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What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? (Moi ici: Ou seja, seguiram o caminho menos percorrido. Pensaram fora da caixa... ) He went back and re-analyzed 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, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”
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when the strong and weak actors go toe-to-toe (effectively, a low n), the weak actor loses roughly 80 percent of the time because “there is nothing to mediate or deflect a strong player‘s power advantage.”
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In contrast, when the weak actors choose to compete on a different strategic basis, they lose less than 40 percent of the time “because the weak refuse to engage where the strong actor has a power advantage.” Weak actors have been winning more conflicts over the years because they see and imitate the successful strategies of other actors and have come to the realization that refusing to fight on the strong actor’s terms improves their chances of victory."

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Este blog é sobre os underdogs deste mundo, os que não seguem as estratégias convencionais ditadas pelos economistas da nossa praça... os que fuçam e encontram uma alternativa, os que não esperam que alguém os salve, os que se salvam a si próprios...
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Trechos retirados de "David And Goliath: The Art And Science Of The Underdog"