The Underdog Advantage: Book Summary for Busy People

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 heritage—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’ve studied and built our strategic model on the foundation of insurgency. Since the 1980s, and our work with Steven Jobs at Apple, we’ve 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.

DAVID MOREY
David Morey shows audiences how to use these underdog lessons to win over employees and customers…AND keep them as your strongest advocates.
With boldness and inspiration, David has shown thousands of people how to win.

SPEECH TOPIC SUMMARIES

INSURGENT LEADERSHIP: THE NEW WAY TO WIN: David Morey has helped win many global elections and added hundreds of millions of dollars of market value to some of the world’s best companies. He details the stories, strategies and battle-tested approaches of his award-winning book, The Underdog Advantage: Using the Power of Insurgent Strategy to Put Your Business On Top (McGraw-Hill). Learn how to “play offense,” control the competitive dialogue, define your own personal leadership brand, transform your culture and add new and enduring insurgent growth and value to your business. Today, one thing is clear: If you don’t use the Insurgent Advantage yourself, it will be used against you.

Topics:
Leadership, Innovation, Competitive Strategy, Culture Change, Transformation

THE POWER OF INSURGENT MARKETING, BRAND BUILDING AND SELLING: David Morey is one of the foremost experts in transferring and empowering insurgent political lessons to solve today’s unique business challenges. Advising some of the world’s most successful CEOs, Morey uses his cutting-edge insurgent framework to help companies drive new efficiency and effectiveness in marketing, branding and sales. His insurgent sales model and speech have ignited remarkable growth and empowered audiences around the world.

Topics:
Sales Training, Marketing, Brand Building, Growth Strategies, Turnarounds

THE MAGIC OF THINKING DIFFERENTLY AND PLAYING OFFENSE: David Morey tells the story of his company’s first corporate client, Steve Jobs, and how he helped transfer political strategic discipline to the legendary Apple and the wider corporate world. Key to this speech is the power of driving innovation and creativity by thinking out of the box. In doing this, David uses the metaphor of magic to drive home lessons in insurgent thinking.

Topics:
Innovation, Creativity, Leadership, Organizational Transformation, Strategic Differentiation