The Infinite Game

Sinek begins Chapter 9 with a personal anecdote about his rivalry with an unnamed author who also writes in the self-help genre. He regularly compared the ratings of their books, but this changed when he and the author were invited to speak at the same event. Sinek opened the talk by telling the other author, “You make me unbelievably insecure because all your strengths are all my weaknesses. You can do so well the things that I really struggle to do.” The author responded, “The insecurity is mutual” (160). Sinek tells this story to introduce the concept of a “worthy rival.” He considered the other author a competitor because he was trapped in a finite mindset.

A worthy rival is another player in the infinite game, either inside or outside of one’s industry, who acts as a point of comparison. This player does something the same as if not better than us, so we can understand and improve our own weaknesses by comparing. Sinek cites the tennis rivalry between Chris Evert Lloyd and Martina Navratilova during the 1970s and 1980s as an example of worthy rivals. Each player pushed the other to elevate their game by identifying weaknesses through their competitive bouts. However, Sinek doesn’t recommend that leaders obsess over their rivals, as he once did. He then introduces his unnamed rival: Adam Grant.

Adam Grant, author of books such as Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (2013) and Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016), shifted Sinek’s mindset from “channeling feelings of insecurity against [Grant] to partnering with him to advance our common cause” (163). Sinek compares his rivalry with Grant to that between Ford Motor Company and Toyota in 2006 after Alan Mulally became the CEO of Ford. When Mulally became CEO, Ford’s market share was a quarter less than what it was 15 years ago. Other automotive manufacturers surpassed Ford because the American public viewed them as unreliable. Early on, Mulally drove a different model Ford each night. After driving all the models, he asked to drive a Toyota Camry, but Ford didn’t have one. The senior executives hadn’t thought of buying from and researching their competition. Mulally made Ford buy a fleet of competitor vehicles to analyze their manufacturing, determined to make Toyota a worthy rival. Toyota became a standard by which Ford executives and employees could measure their products. Mulally wanted to reestablish Henry Ford’s original just cause: “to provide safe and efficient transportation for everyone, to open the highways to all mankind” (166). Under Mulally’s leadership, Ford weathered the 2008 Great Recession without government assistance. He advocated for other car companies, like GM and Chrysler, to receive bailouts because he believed they were worthy rivals who pushed his company to improve. He also asked GM and Chrysler to team up with Ford to help endure the financial downturn. They refused, but Toyota, Honda, and Nissan agreed to the deal: The infinite-minded companies “understood that the best option for their own survival […] is to keep the game in play” (167).

Sinek also cites Apple and IBM as worthy rivals who competed productively during the 1980s. IBM historically developed computers for business needs, while Apple developed computers for personal needs. When IBM entered the personal computer (PC) industry, they used Apple as a model. In response to IBM’s PC release, Apple launched an ad that read, “Welcome, IBM. Seriously” (168). The rest of the ad spoke to Apple’s respect for IBM as a worthy rival. They emphasized the importance of the PC in everyone’s lives and advanced their just cause through mutual effort. The rivalry between IBM and Apple eventually made PCs a necessity. However, IBM and Apple didn’t just compete through products; they also represented two competing ideologies of the computer industry. Apple framed their brand as a creative tool for artists and innovators, while IBM focused on business professionals. These competing ideologies cultivated brand loyalty for both companies. Over time, as Apple continued to innovate, companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Blackberry lost sight of their just cause and started treating Apple like a competitor in a finite game. Nowadays, Apple’s worthy rivals are Facebook and Google. To Sinek, Apple remains the only major tech company “fighting for the rights of individuals and challenging the status quo” (173).

Sinek proceeds to explain the pitfalls of focusing on a cause too much. “Cause blindness” happens when an individual becomes so obsessed with their cause or proving others’ causes wrong that they fail to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Cause blindness exacerbates ignorance and instills a finite mindset against potential worthy rivals. People don’t need to find worthy rivals’ just causes right or wrong. To Sinek, establishing moral parameters is unproductive because it distracts from the potential lessons of worthy rivals—lessons to improve their own performances.

Sinek believes the United States’ peremptory declaration of victory after the Berlin Wall fell hampered future foreign policy because they thought they had “won” a finite game. However, the Cold War “met all the standards of an Infinite Game” (175). The disappearance of worthy rivals doesn’t mean victory. In infinite games, advanced players need to recognize worthy rivals as essential for their success. The Soviet Union “dropped out” of the game; the US didn’t defeat them. After the Cold War, the US “suffered a sort of Cause Blindness” because it thought itself unrivaled (176)—when they should have focused on their weaknesses. In Sinek’s analysis of history, the Cold War for the US never ended; it just changed rivals. In the present, North Korea has supplanted the nuclear threat once posed by the Soviets. Sinek compares these geopolitical dynamics to business, citing how major corporations like Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix overpowered former rivals. When MySpace, Borders, and Blockbuster faced these more innovative companies, they refused to consider them worthy rivals from whom to learn.

Sinek starts Chapter 10 with the story of Walt Disney. In 1952, Disney made an “existential flex,” defined as “the capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model or strategic course in order to more effectively advance a Just Cause” (185). This disruption was the creation of Disneyland. After spending the first half of the 20th century honing and redefining the craft of animation, Disney worked to build an idyllic wonderland where people could escape their daily lives. However, he faced considerable upheaval before the construction of Disneyland. After the profitable release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937, Walt Disney Productions became more bureaucratic and less visionary. Knowing he couldn’t advance his just cause at Walter Disney Productions anymore, Disney raised money by selling property and taking out a loan against his life insurance policy to start Disneyland. By putting everything at risk, he discovered another way to spread his just cause and vision throughout the world.

Infinite-minded, visionary leaders use existential flexibility when they realize their current path will not advance their just cause. Existential flexibility should not be confused with defensive tactics in the face of financial or technological pressures. It only occurs when a company is already functioning and relatively stable. An infinite-minded leader knows to flex when current business practices inhibit the cause. This move is both a leap of faith and a methodical risk intended to disrupt the status quo for the sake of a better future. Apple’s just cause to “challenge the status quo” with their personal computers is an example of existential flexibility (188). While touring Xerox PARC, Apple’s innovation center in Palo Alto, California, Steve Jobs and other executives saw the latest graphical user interface (GUI) technology, which allowed users to operate a computer without having to learn a computer language. Jobs insisted GUI was what Apple needed to advance its just cause. Despite pushback from the executive team, he redirected millions of dollars toward integrating GUI into Apple products. In four years, Apple introduced the Macintosh, a “computer operating system that completely revolutionized personal computing” (190). Through existential flexibility, Apple made personal computing available to everyone.

Sinek uses Kodak as an example of a company who decided against existential flexibility. Despite leading the photography industry for most of the 20th century, Kodak did not pursue digital photography when the technology became available. To Sinek, they were finite-minded, disinterested in challenging the status quo that made them the most successful photography company in the world. They insisted on sticking with celluloid film and print photography for their business model. Companies like Nikon and Fiji embraced digital photography, and their digital cameras soon overtook Kodak’s products. In 2007, Kodak filed for bankruptcy, as they failed to flex.