Annals of innovation: a reading summary

Annals of Innovation

The document focuses on Vivek Ranadive, who decided to coach his daughter's basketball team. Made up of mostly blonde young girls, the team was not recognized as having any particular prowess in the game, which tended to be dominated by more athletic, taller black girls. The author makes the comparison between these team differences as similar to the differences between David and Goliath in the Bible. The interesting thing was, however, that David not only recognized his weakness, but also turned it into a strength by means of using an unconventional and surprising tactic against Goliath. David used his size and speed against the bulk and strength of his opponent.

Vivek used a similar strategy to gain many victories with his daughter's basketball team. Sadly, the brilliance of this tactic was not recognized by critics, and especially by parents of the opposing teams. Vivek was obliged to stop using the technique, but not before gaining many David-and-Goliath victories with his team.

Important Points

Faced with coaching a basketball team made up of mostly 12-year-olds, Vivek Ranadive also faced the challenge of finding the game "mindless."

Part of this mindlessness was inherent in the way that weak teams catered to the strengths of strong teams while remaining weak themselves.

The Biblical David's victory over Goliath is considered an anomaly, since most similar battles in life tend to awarded victory to the apparently strongest; the "Goliath."

David's victory was based on his own recognition of his weakness, which he used to devise an unconventional strategy.

Similar strategies were followed by Lawrence of Arabia, who battled his "giants" not in their own territory, but in a territory they did not know and were therefore weak.

Vivek himself started a software company on an unconventional premise for the time, which was "real time" processing.

Vivek applied lessons from David, Lawrence of Arabia, and his own business sense to his basketball team. He taught the girls to "press" on the court, rather than wait for the strong team to come to them.

The Redwood City team, the "Davids," used their pressing strategy to gain many victories over conventionally stronger teams, until they were accused of unfair play.

This is often the case when unconventional strategies is used to gain victory over recognized giants in a field.

Although the team was obliged to return to a more conventional method of play, the premise of the article is that they made the Goliaths wonder, for a while at least, if they were giants after all.

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