Vaitchanan, the infinite game. The popular author and Ted lecturer Simon Sinek

recently published a book entitled The Infinite Game. Based on the distinction first articulated by

James Kass, it's about the difference between two types of enterprise.

One, a finite game, has a starting and ending point.

It obeys rules, recognizes boundaries, and has winners and losers.

Most sports are like this.

So often it is politics.

There are campaigns, elections, rules, regulations, successful,

and defeated candidates. Businesses can be run this way when they focus on quarterly profits,

share prices, market share and the like. But there are also infinite games. These have no starting point or finishing line,

no clear winners and losers,

no agreed rules or boundaries.

Art is like this, so am music and literature.

Beethoven didn't win, Bach didn't lose.

Great artists changed the rules.

That's what Beethoven, Schoenberg and Stravinsky did,

and so did Van Gogh, Césin and Picasso. Politics can be like this when it rises above

opinion polls and sets its vision on larger issues of justice, equality and the moral health of society. Education is a finite game

when it focuses on exam results and qualifications, but it can be an infinite game when it's about

breadth and depth of understanding and character development. Finite games are played to win.

Infinite games are played for their own sake.

Finac games are usually performed in front of an audience of some kind.

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