The Puzzle of the Underdog’s Victory

Abstract

Traditionally, Chinese companies have been viewed as underdogs in global competition, but many Chinese latecomers have actually caught up and become major players in the global market in the past decade. This begs the question about this puzzle. Based on the authors’ case evidence, the central theme of this chapter is that many successful corporate underdogs share a pattern with two salient features. First, these firms tend to have stretch goals, that is, seemingly impossible goals given their available capabilities. Second, such firms tend to behave in a way similar to the notion of bricolage in terms of “making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities.” By focusing on the question of how stretch goals and exploratory bricolage work together in the context of China, this chapter identifies the bricolage pattern with both theoretical and practical implications for both scholars and practitioners within and beyond China.