Weightlifters and Figure Skaters - Winning at one often precludes success at the other

Welcome to Thoreauly Confused 2.0 where we'll attempt to make some sense of various theories and ideas about innovation, business, consumers and more.

To kick things off, let's start with a quote by Dr. G who suggests that, “As you become excellent at something, you will suck at other things.” 

He goes on to offer the example of a weightlifter who trains for years to become a world class athlete. Such focused training and the skills that lead to success in a field like this in turn makes it difficult if not impossible to change direction and become great elsewhere as a gymnast or a figure skater for instance.

This line of thinking may help to explain why large established firms have difficulty with radical innovation - developing or even adjusting to them. Going one step further, they might not even be aware of emerging trends that don’t have obvious connections to their business model just as one may not expect an Olympic weightlifter to know anything about the world’s top figure skaters.

Gans and Sterns (2003) refer to this as "blind spots" that large firms have when they are so focused on their current business (already a proven success) that they fail to even notice new opportunities or threats that don't resemble their expectations about what deserves attention.

Yet even if they do take notice, the effort and energy required to succeed at what appears to be an unrelated area of expertise would be challenging at best and perhaps impossible.  The amount of time (i.e. practice) required to excel at something new is impractical for an individual or business that is already focused on what they do well.

If you think this sounds similar to the “10,000 hour rule” made popular by Malcolm Gladwell (in his 2008 book Outliers) you might be on to something.  This rule suggests that practicing roughly 10,000 hours at some skill will lead to excellence.  However, there are two important things to note about this.

First, this rule has been roundly criticized as Rachel Nuwer points out that 88 journal articles studied the topic and found that practice, “explains just 12 percent of skill mastery and subsequent success” (2014, para 2).

In addition, as Dr. G might point out, established businesses have far more invested than just “practice”.  Physical assets, human resources, and current capabilities are all geared toward their existing business and are not easily re-directed to new purposes.  New firms on the other hand are building from scratch and can tailor their hiring and resources to succeed with emerging trends or “fail fast” at minimal cost.

Going back to the well one last time with our fictional weightlifter – he may not have much to fear on his path to a gold medal from an upstart figure skater attempting to compete in the clean-and-jerk.  However, when it comes to sustaining long term opportunities and income from the professional circuit, he may wish to re-consider learning to perform a triple lutz.    

References:

Gans, J. S., & Stern, S. (2003). The product market and the market for “ideas”: commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs. Research Policy, 32(2), 333–350.

Nuwer, R. (2014, Aug 20). The 10,000 hour rule is not real. Smithsonian.com  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not-real-180952410/