Game Change
Sports, we tend to assume, offer a sharp-edged reflection of business life in microcosm — leadership under pressure, the winning mentality, valuable lessons drawn from loss. It’s all there. Just kick back with a beer and a pizza and watch your pathway to workplace success unfold on game day. Well, it turns out that the connections are often far more nuanced than we might have presumed. Do elite athletes really make elite employees? What’s the connection between Swedish pragmatics in soccer and a thriving startup culture? Have you factored in the difference between “wicked” and “kind” environments (and what does that even mean)? We investigate all of these pivotal tangents, and much more, in this Big Think special collection of essays, interviews, and curated book excerpts. Forget everything you’ve been told about the synergies between sports and business. It’s time to rewrite the rules.
The truth is, none of us are simply in the business of our respective sectors — be it shoes, sports, or technology. At the core, we’re all in the people business.
Unlike their American peers, who tend to lionize founders, Swedish companies tend to embrace the team over the individual.
In wicked learning environments the rules of the game aren’t fixed.
The trophy for most self-confidence squeezed into a single sentence goes to Brain Clough, one of British football’s more successful team managers: “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I wasn’t on that particular job.”
