{"id":63918,"date":"2024-06-01T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/01\/silver-medal-linings-in-sports-business-or-elections-it-is-the-runner-up-who-defines-a-memorable-winner\/"},"modified":"2024-06-01T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T19:46:00","slug":"silver-medal-linings-in-sports-business-or-elections-it-is-the-runner-up-who-defines-a-memorable-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/01\/silver-medal-linings-in-sports-business-or-elections-it-is-the-runner-up-who-defines-a-memorable-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver Medal Linings: In sports, business, or elections, it is the runner-up who defines a memorable winner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Silver<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

Jerry Seinfeld is on his 1999 tour, \u201cI Am Telling You For The Last Time.\u201d During one of his routines, he comes up with a gag about competing in the Olympics.\u201cI would rather come last than be in the second place,\u201d says Seinfeld.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou win the gold, you feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou win the bronze, you think, \u2018At least I got something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you win that silver, that\u2019s like, \u2018Congratulations, you almost won. Of all the losers, you came in first of that group. You\u2019re the No. 1 loser<\/a>. No one lost ahead of you\u2019,\u201d says the comedy star closing the gag. Go ahead and finish laughing. Once you have done that, think about these dates: IPL final on May 26, 2024, Cricket World Cup final on November 19, 2023 and, of course, June 4, next week. On the first two dates mentioned, someone walked away with glory and someone else with misery. It will be the same next week.<\/p>\n

Evolution has hardwired into us the idea of a winner<\/a> and, by the principle of complementarity, a loser. Out of breath and hiding away from a sabre-toothed tiger, managing to grab a seat on one of those Polynesian canoes headed to Hawaii (no stops), escaping the yearning jaws of prehistoric crocodiles at a watering hole, it was either ancient cremation rites or a few extra happy years for furthering hominid genes. Not a surprise that our genes learnt to be selfish, to think of a binary of win or lose.We don\u2019t have to be stuck in that thinking. It is precisely this notion that has created a winner-takes-all economic scenario in sports<\/a> (remember tennis player Sumit Nagal\u2019s statement that he was struggling financially), business, entrepreneurship<\/a> and even academics<\/a> and government research grants. The top 1% of tennis players take home more than 60% of the winnings. Top cricket players make way more than the rest. Only one in 10 startups gets funded. A handful of companies\u2014precisely 20\u2014are now taking close to 80% (on a three-year moving average basis) of the profits and more than half of the free cash flow generated by the Indian corporate sector, according to a fund manager analysis.Winners have to be lauded, but look at the consequences of being besotted with just them. A mental health epidemic among students, researchers and founders. The reality is that the winner and the one who did not win, are separated by a distance as small as the one between heads and tails on a coin. The two complete each other. Call it competitive entanglement, if you will. Both the winner and the runner-up remain stuck like shards of broken glass inside each other well after the contest is over.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Competitive entanglement<\/strong>
That which does not kill you makes you stronger. It is the runner-up that defines the winner. Winners that are remembered. Let\u2019s begin with sports. Chess<\/a> maestro Viswanathan Anand calls sports \u201csmokeless war\u201d. Consider two examples to begin with.<\/p>\n

It is 2008. Rafael Nadal is the rising star and contender for the best player of the generation (later GOAT) title. He has beaten Federer<\/a> three times already at the French Open in the preceding three years. But there is a last battlement of Fort Federer that remains unassailed, the Wimbledon men\u2019s championship. In 2006 and 2007, Nadal had made a spirited attempt, only to fail. After his complete destruction of Federer at the 2008 French Open final, all eyes are on Wimbledon. As luck would have it, both make the finals. Nadal wins the first two sets. Federer levels it at 2-all. The final set is Ragnar\u00f6k. Under fading light, both players unleash incredible, geometry-defying shots. Finally, late into the evening, as camera flashes go off, Federer nets a shot, Nadal collapses in what many call the greatest tennis match ever. Nadal and Federer keep on playing for a few years more\u2014Nadal still is\u2014with Federer calling him his greatest rival and one who made him better.<\/p>\n

This strife isn\u2019t just limited to sports or war but even great intellectual debate<\/a>. Take, for instance, two great economists: John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. \u201cKeynes and Schumpeter were not only contemporaries, but also rivals who had a \u2018distaste for each other\u2019s work,\u2019\u201d according to Harvard business professor Thomas K McCraw, author of Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction.<\/p>\n

Both differed on just about everything. Keynes considered capitalist mechanics the main cause of the evil of unemployment. Schumpeter praised capitalism as the most economically progressive system of all times.<\/p>\n

In a paper written by Maria Brouwer called \u201cSchumpeter and Keynes on Investment and Entrepreneurship\u201d, the author says, \u201cSchumpeter built his model of a progressing economy<\/a> on the ground-work of the circular flow. Net investments will occur, when the circular flow is broken up due to the introduction of innovations…. Keynes\u2014in contrast\u2014wanted to demonstrate that capitalist economies were inclined to establish equilibria below their potential. He designed a model, in which total income is determined by effective demand that is composed of consumption and investment expenditures. <\/p>\n

Consumption is determined by the marginal propensity to consume of wage earners and capitalists\u2026. Keynes\u2019 theory diverges from Schumpeter\u2019s on several points. Most importantly, Keynes does not explain economic growth, whereas Schumpeter made this the kernel of his theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Individually, they might not have gotten along but today both of them continue to influence different realms of economic phenomenon<\/a>. Each time a new innovation comes along, say, the app economy or artificial intelligence, it is Schumpeter to whom we turn to find explanations for their possible impact on the economic structure.<\/p>\n

But when a country\u2019s economic wheels seem to get stuck in the mud\u2014like it happened in the year of the Covid-19\u2014governments all over the world look to Keynes for answers. The US\u2019s quantitative easing, whether in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008 or the deflationary effect of Covid-19, was borrowed from Keynes\u2019 playbook.<\/p>\n

The two great minds did not concur ever though. It is for the practitioner to figure out the relevant theory for the situation and then apply it. The academia is a little different from sports or, for that matter, corporate world because the processes deciding dominance don\u2019t take place in a matter of hours but years. And that\u2019s why the effect of competition<\/a> does not show up as intensely.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Love hurts and so does loss<\/strong>
Loss hurts. Turn towards sports again. Take the case of another tennis legend, Bjorn Borg. He and John McEnroe played, among other places, twice at Wimbledon. In 1980 Borg won. And in 1981, McEnroe won. They played again that year in the finals of the US Open. McEnroe won that contest as well. Borg shook hands at the net and left before the presentation ceremony was over. Borg never played a major tournament again. In a New York Times article, McEnroe said: \u201cTo me, it was bittersweet\u2026. For years, I would see him and say: \u2018When are you coming back? This is ridiculous, let\u2019s go.\u2019\u201d McEnroe, who has long been a tennis commentator for ESPN, added, \u201cIt just felt like there was a void and it took me a couple of years to accept that. I think it was too bad for the sport as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anand, who has won more than he has lost in his entire career, has an important perspective. \u201cAt the highest level, a loss isn\u2019t something that stays with you for a day. You spend years and years qualifying for the world championships. When you lose you cannot just forget it in a day. Even today there are board positions I cannot bear to look at. I have just blocked it out from my memory,\u201d he says. He is lucky, he says, that he has had more successes than failures.<\/p>\n

In the corporate world, where large companies compete, when a company loses, the effect is felt directly by the employees, especially senior executives. \u201cWhen such changes happen, those who are really insecure in the new environment almost always resign, usually going to a competitor. This is usually a practice in the CXO community, which is highly insecure as such; almost as a face-saving thing,\u201d says Rajeev Raju, a leadership coach and founder, Gravitas Consulting.<\/p>\n

\n
\"P4Vishy\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The 1992 film Knight Moves, starring Christopher Lambert, is about two chess players. The one who loses in a critical contest turns into a serial killer! Now that\u2019s kind of extreme, let\u2019s admit it, but you get the idea. \u201cA game or a contest is not merely about winning or losing. It is about discovery. Discovery of one\u2019s highest potential, and an honest striving for actualising it,\u201d says Manish Malhotra, a leadership coach.<\/p>\n

Very few remember winners who won without a capable opponent on the other side. Think Karna-Arjun (the myth, not the film), or Thor and Loki. At the very top, the margins between greatness and the not-so-great can be really thin.<\/p>\n

As Jerry Seinfeld observes in another of his gags. \u201cThe greatest lesson you can learn in life: \u2018sucks\u2019 and \u2018great\u2019 are pretty close. They\u2019re not that different,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSucks\u201d and \u201cgreat\u201d are the only two ratings people even give to anything anymore. \u201cHey, let\u2019s go see that new movie. I heard it\u2019s great.\u201d \u201cReally? I heard it sucked.\u201d \u201cHow could it suck? It\u2019s supposed to be great.\u201d \u201cI heard the beginning is great, and then after that, it sucks.\u201d \u201cOh, that sucks.\u201d \u201cI know. It could have been great.\u201d I say that \u201csucks\u201d and \u201cgreat\u201d are the exact same thing.<\/p>\n

You have an ice cream cone. Walking down the street, the ice cream falls off the top of the cone, hits the pavement. Sucks. What do you say? \u201cGreat.\u201d Okay, all right, win\/lose, it is a binary, sure, but the two are as close as 1 is to 0.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
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Jerry Seinfeld is on his 1999 tour, \u201cI Am Telling You For The Last Time.\u201d During one of his routines, he comes up with a gag about competing in the Olympics.\u201cI would rather come last than be in the second place,\u201d says Seinfeld. \u201cYou win the gold, you feel good.\u201d \u201cYou win the bronze, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.etimg.com\/photo\/msid-42031747\/et-logo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[602],"tags":[61217,449,9073,3478,35514,61219,1933,67,3026,11342,61218,61220,22037,34708,56244,61221,22106,1023,6052],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63920,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63918\/revisions\/63920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}