You're Better Than Blockbuster
Dispatch 008
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Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50M in 2000.10 years later Blockbuster was bankrupt.
In 1975 Eastman Kodak invented the digital camera, they patented the technology and squirreled it away for a while. Those patents ran out in 1995. Within 5 years Kodak was bankrupt.
Research in Motion (Blackberry) was #1 on Fortune's fastest growing companies in 2009. By 2014 the Blackberry was less than 5% of the US Smartphone market.
Blockbuster's board wasn't will to give up late fees.
Kodak leader couldn't imagine a business model without film sales.
Research In Motion scoffed at touch screens, and waited 5 years after the iPhone release to get serious about touch screen technology.
So entrenched in their historical business models & features that these companies went from the heights of power in the industry to nonexistence. Inflexibility put them in the grave. Unwilling to bend their strategy to changing markets & technology, they were broken by upstarts they ridiculed.
In the words of Dr James Carse, each of these companies were playing a finite game - a game with known rules, known players, and a known landscape. Kodak KNEW that film sales was a license to print money. Blockbuster KNEW that late fees didn't fit a streaming paradigm. RIM KNEW that users loved their physical keyboard.
The problem? They weren't playing a finite game. The Infinite Game never ends, it has no set rules, the players constantly change, technological advances can't be held at bay, and winning is not a possibility - only survival.
This misperception of the game plagues people in the same way it does these companies. The easiest way to spot a finite game player is their focus on short term everything.
Promotions. Rankings. Winners & Losers.
The finite player approaches the world from a zero sum point of view. Their assumption is always that someone else's success is detrimental to personal goals. They approach every interaction as seeking to "win", as though you can win in business and relationships. Fundamentally their short term, short sighted, short circuited view of the world makes them toxic.
Infinite Players see the bigger game. Here's 5 tips to be embrace your role as an Infinite Player:
- See opportunity instead of loss. Instead of a zero sum view, see through the eyes of next year, next decade, or next century. Grow the pie for everyone and you'll always have a bigger slice than you did yesterday.
- Invest courageously in yourself. Foregoing benefit today, for greater benefit in the future is the underlying principle of all investment. Don't waste your resources today - give you future self a gift in the form of new skills, assets & relationships. They won't be free, but nothing worthwhile is.
- Find your trust tribe. Advancement for humankind has always come from the benefits of society. Those benefits range from the ability to specialize to the emotional benefits of community. Find your people and build develop deep trusting bonds. Without them you're less effective, and frankly - it's rarely as fun without a team
- Compete fiercely, with yourself. The worthy opponent to spur growth is right there sitting with you. Consistently make yourself a little better tomorrow than you were today, and you will revolutionize what you can achieve. You are your only worthy opponent.
- Embrace existential flexibility. Blockbuster, Kodak & RIM met their rapid demise because they were unwilling to be flexible. Instead of seeing risks & potential market upsets, see opportunities and run after them.
Playing the Infinite Game allows us to see setbacks as learning, risks as opportunities, and peers as partners instead of competitors.
What I've been watching - The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Sinek looks at the concepts of winning and losing, and reframes them through the lens of 1960s theologian, James Carse. These ideas of finite and infinite games provided inspiration for this dispatch. Finite players always find themselves in quagmire whether they are countries, companies or people. Give it a listen; I would love to hear your thoughts.
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That's it for this week's dispatch. I hope you embrace the Infinite Game, playing better every day than you did the day before.
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Keep Learning, Leading & Growing -
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Adam Malone 📬
The Sometimes Tenacious Founder
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113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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