When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, their winning percentage goes from 28.5 to 63.6. Even when one side was at least ten times as powerful – in terms of armed might and population – the underdog won almost a third of the time. David’s do win. This was the finding of political scientist Ivan Arrequin-Toft, who looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants.
This article - How David Beats Goliath – by Malcolm Gladwell ran in the May 12 Annals of Innovation section of The New Yorker. It’s well worth the read.