Playing Infinite and Finite Games

Infinite Thinking

In 1868, after the death of his father, 14-year-old George Eastman was forced to leave school and find work as a messenger boy.

In his early twenties, now working as a bank clerk and planning a vacation, he purchased a photographic outfit to record the trip, which he described as "a pack-horse load.”

He quickly became passionate about photography, fascinated with the complex chemical processes involved and experimenting with making the wet film plates used at the time.

He wanted to find a way to simplify the process of creating and using filming plates and by 1880 he’d managed to develop and patent a dry plate formula as well as the machines to prepare them in large quantities.

"The idea gradually dawned on me," he later said, "that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair," or as he described it "to make the camera as convenient as the pencil."

For the next 100 years Eastman and his company focused on delivering this vision of making photography easy and accessible to all.

In 1885 he patented a flexible film roll to replace plates altogether, separating photography from the difficult process of film development.

In 1888 he released the Kodak camera, which came loaded with enough roll to take 100 pictures.

"You Press the Button, We Do the Rest"

In 1900 the Kodak Brownie introduced low priced photography with a $1 camera.

In 1935 Kodak launched Kodachrome, the first colour film for the masses.

In 1963 it was the Instamatic camera, reducing the costs of photography and increasing the simplicity even further.

And in 1975 they invented the digital camera.

Internal reports anticipated that a complete shift to digital photography would happen by 2010.

George Eastman and Kodak had become incredibly successful, with a global workforce of over 125,000 people, by focusing on their vision and playing the Infinite Game.

Infinite and Finite Games

Life can be broken out into two types of activities that were defined by James Carse and inspired Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game.

Finite Games	Infinite Games
A simple set of rules	No set rules
A known number of players	An unknown number of players
Scarcity of resources	An abundance of resources
An agreed objective	No clear objective or time horizon
An end	No practical end
Strive to win, to be the best	Stive to improve, to get betterr
Finite Games are Zero-sum Games: Someone’s gain results in someone else's loss and there is a clear winner and clear losers.	Infinite Games are Positive-sum Games:  There are no clear winners or losers and all participants can potentially benefit.

“Better” suggests a journey of constant improvement and makes us feel like we are being invited to contribute our talents and energies to make progress in that journey. “Better,” in the Infinite Game, is better than “best.” ― Simon Sinek

All sports are Finite Games.

Some elements of life or business can be a Finite Game, like a price negotiation, or a battle for market share of an established and stable sector (these clarifiers are key).

Transactional leadership works for Finite Games - Short-term focus, incentives and KPIs can be very effective in these situations.

But most of life, careers and business are actually Infinite Games.

“The game of business fits the very definition of an infinite game” - Simon Sinek

Infinite thinking focuses on growth and development, where long-term thinking and continuous learning are essential.

Kodak’s vision of making photography easy and accessible to all was something they could always strive to do as they helped revolutionise the technology itself.

“Players with an infinite mindset want to leave their organizations in a better shape than they found them.” - Simon Sinek

The problem comes when people are faced with Infinite Games, but they make the mistake of thinking they are facing a Finite Game.

If people are trying to win at all costs to beat competitors or achieve short-term goals, it can put the focus on the wrong thing to drive continuous improvement.

Heavy discounting to boost sales cuts margins in the long-term.

The constant hustle to hit short-term goals creates a cycle of exhaustion and inconsistency.

Solely focusing on quarterly targets can mean that you don’t make the right long-term strategic decisions.

Finite Thinking

The invention of the digital camera was a great opportunity and also a great challenge.

The company leadership of Kodak were concerned that digital photography would undercut their main business of selling film and eat into their core revenue machine.

And faced with that challenge, they chose to stop developing digital photography.

They had become too focused on the short-term goals of their quarterly results and bottom line and lost sight of the vision of making photography easy and accessible to all.

Kodak stopped playing the Infinite Game and started playing the Finite Game.

For a few more years the revenue and workforce numbers continued to grow.

But others seized the opportunity to build on their invention and a revolution in accessible photography ultimately killed the film processing business.

Digital photography had made “the camera as convenient as the pencil.”

And by 2012 the company was bankrupt.

"The world is moving, and a company that contents itself with present accomplishments soon falls behind." - George Eastman

Are you and your business playing Infinite or Finite Games?