Watching the Olympics leads me to comment on the lessons that sport has for business.  I believe that the benefits of sporting lessons for business are exaggerated.  Business success is based on more than motivation, discipline and hard work.  It depends heavily on innovation – and sport is a very poor guide to that.  In sport [...]]]>

Watching the Olympics leads me to comment on the lessons that sport has for business.  I believe that the benefits of sporting lessons for business are exaggerated.  Business success is based on more than motivation, discipline and hard work.  It depends heavily on innovation – and sport is a very poor guide to that.  In sport the rules are clearly defined and everyone has to conform to them.  In business every assumption and rule can be challenged. Organisations must be prepared to change everything including their fundamental business model.  Sporting coaches cannot help here.  Creativity, lateral thinking and innovative leadership are needed.

Of course there are innovations in sporting methods but compared to the pace of change in business they are tiny.  There is little real innovation in top level sport – mainly because the rules are so stringent. The Fosbury flop is a true example of lateral thinking and an entirely new approach.  But it is 40 years since Dick Fosbury came up with it and there have been precious few similar examples since.  What creativity can a 400 metre runner really show?  Sure he can train differently but this is not radical innovation.  If you look at business you see innovative companies taking big risks with completely different models, methods, combinations and approaches.  Torvill and Dean doing a different ice dance is creative but it is not in the same league as the Nintendo Wii. If T & D tried anything really innovative, like jet powered skates, the judges would ban it. But you can try just about anything in business and that is the crucial difference.  Sports can teach us about mental toughness, goals, belief, handling pressure, motivation and concentration.  In other words mostly left brain disciplines.  If you want to develop right brain skills in creativity, lateral thinking and innovation then look to the arts, theatre even warfare – but not sport.

The 100m race is essentially exactly the same event now as it was 50 years ago. Golf has hardly changed. If you took Arnold Palmer or Sam Snead or Bobby Jones and put them into a golf tournament today they would be completely at home. Similary Lew Hoad or Fred Perry could compete at Wimbledon.  The standard would be higher but the only significant innovation they would notice would be the tiebreaker.  Now think about taking a businessman from the 1950s and dropping him into business today.  He would be amazed at how everything had changed and he would struggle to cope. Business faces innovation challenges every day and has to adapt, learn and innovate to survive.  Most sports are frozen in one mode which essentially changes very little. Sport is artificially constrained by rules that make it easy to understand for spectators, officials and participants.  Business is real life where all bets are off and anything can happen. That is the difference and that is why sport has little to teach us about the most important aspect of business today – innovation.

Paul Sloane