The Infinite Game

When you play sports, there are a lot of rules to abide by. Some of the most important rules are that everyone playing the game agrees on when it starts and stops, how to score a point, and that the deciding factor on who wins is who has the most points at the end. This is what’s known as a finite game.

Contrary to what many people think, business is not a finite game. There are no start and stop times that all players agree upon. And while there are certain legal rules that all businesses are told to follow, what the players do within those rules is up to them.

The business world is, in fact, an Infinite Game. There’s no fixed time frame and no agreed-upon way of keeping score. Since there is no possibility of winning, the goal of an Infinite Game is to stay in the game for as long as possible.

It may sound blasphemous, but profit and revenue are not the only signs of business strength. In fact, it can be truly detrimental to look at revenue and profits as being the sole decider of success. After all, today’s high profits will mean nothing if you’re not strong enough to weather tomorrow’s challenges. This is why business leaders need to think in terms of an Infinite Game. They should build something that’s not designed to “win” but rather to last for generations to come.

When your business plan is focused on short-term goals, like getting the best possible earnings for the next quarterly report, you’re bound to get a kind of tunnel vision that ignores what’s really important, like being innovative and creating the best product or service that people want. These things are far more important than getting the most market share or getting the most money to your shareholders.

Consider Microsoft’s original guiding principle: As Bill Gates put it, he wanted his company to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” This definitely falls under the infinite mindset. However, in the early 2000s, under the finite-minded leadership of former CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft became focused on beating Apple and winning more market share – to the detriment of its reputation.

Microsoft chased after Apple with devices such as the Zune, for example, which was designed to compete in the marketplace created by the iPod. As a result, the company became less known for its innovative and empowering products, while Apple became known for creating entirely new markets.