David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

that innovators and revolutionaries tend
to have a very particular mix of these
traits—particularly the last three:
openness, conscientiousness, and
agreeableness.
Innovators have to be open. They
have to be able to imagine things that
others cannot and to be willing to
challenge their own preconceptions.
They also need to be conscientious. An
innovator who has brilliant ideas but
lacks the discipline and persistence to
carry them out is merely a dreamer.
That, too, is obvious.
But crucially, innovators need to be
disagreeable. By disagreeable, I don’t
mean obnoxious or unpleasant. I mean
that on that fifth dimension of the Big