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Game Change

Do elite athletes really make elite employees?

Sports, we tend to assume, offer a sharp-edged reflection of business life in microcosm — leadership under pressure, the winning mentality, valuable lessons drawn from loss. It’s all there. Just kick back with a beer and a pizza and watch your pathway to workplace success unfold on game day. Well, it turns out that the connections are often far more nuanced than we might have presumed. Do elite athletes really make elite employees? What’s the connection between Swedish pragmatics in soccer and a thriving startup culture? Have you factored in the difference between “wicked” and “kind” environments (and what does that even mean)? We investigate all of these pivotal tangents, and much more, in this Big Think special collection of essays, interviews, and curated book excerpts. Forget everything you’ve been told about the synergies between sports and business. It’s time to rewrite the rules.

Blue background with the words "Game Change" in white, surrounded by strategic game symbols and graphs in the background.
Presented by
John Templeton Foundation
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Want to get ahead? The best leaders are always humble, proactive and — above all — curious, advises Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota.
A spacecraft travels at the fastest spacecraft speed record through bright, yellow-orange streaks of plasma and solar wind near the Sun.
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Image of a tomato and carrot, each partially overlaid with a black and white digital circuit pattern. The background is a gray, circuit-like texture.
A simple plate of vegetables has found the gaping blindspots in generative AI, and points the way to fixing them.
A hooded crow, exemplifying the intelligence of smart crows, pecks at a nut it holds with its claws on a mossy stone ground.
New evidence suggests the corvid family has surprising mental abilities.
Two individuals are holding and inspecting a large white balloon outdoors, with a silhouette of trees visible in the background at dusk.
Make Sunsets is bringing solar geoengineering from sci-fi to reality.
A collaged image featuring a partial American flag, a tip jar with coins, a percentage-tipping selection panel, a man's face making an awkward expression, and a close-up of striped fabric.
Why do we tip waitstaff and cabdrivers but not flight attendants and retail clerks?
Lockman hole galaxy cluster herschel
In all directions, at great distances, the Universe looks younger, more uniform, and less evolved. Does that mean Earth must be the center?
A stylized clock with a plate as the face and a fork and knife as the hands, emitting a red glow against a dark background, symbolizes the ritual of fasting.
“Having more stem cell activity is good for regeneration, but too much of a good thing over time can have less favorable consequences.”
A map showing a proposed power transmission route from Darwin, Australia to Singapore, spanning 4,300 km, with sites for electricity supply, battery storage, and solar generation indicated along the route.
Australia's AAPowerLink boasts three global superlatives: largest solar farm, largest battery, and longest power cable.
A collage features images of a person smiling, ants, a penicillin bottle, another person's face, and an autonomous car, with the title "The Nightcrawler" at the top against a dark background.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
time dilation
Time is relative, not absolute, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate. Your head and feet, therefore, don't age at the same rate.
Silhouette of a person with their back to the camera, superimposed with daisies and a bright sun above, set against a clear blue sky, evoking a sense of wonder.
Monica Parker explains how creating opportunities for wonder can help foster a thriving, inclusive workplace.
A man with long hair, a beard, glasses, and a bandana on his head, reminiscent of David Foster Wallace, poses for a portrait against a plain background.
The writer’s tragic death at age 46 has led many to view him as a tortured artist. Here’s why this label is reductive.
A deep-space image captured by the JWST showcases numerous galaxies of various shapes, sizes, and colors scattered across a dark background, potentially setting a new cosmic distance record.
Despite many ultra-distant galaxy candidates found with JWST, we still haven't seen anything from the Universe's first 250 million years.
Two men wearing glasses walk side by side outdoors in a sunlit park, with blurred greenery and other people in the background, discussing recent incidents of romance fraud.
Cecilie Fjellhøy, from the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, shares her experience.
Open book showing a hand planting a small green plant on the right page, symbolizing restoration, and a bold black squiggly arrow on a yellow background on the left page, illustrating the dynamic flow of networking.
Mark Weinstein outlines a new path for social media that protects, respects, and empowers the regular users.
An open book with a black-and-white photo of a woman on the left page and a close-up image of a flower bud on the right page.
Late bloomers often find their moment of transformation when life throws them a curveball.
Collage showing a man in a suit with a briefcase floating, silhouettes crossing a street, and a signpost against a colorful sky, symbolizing leadership and direction.
Anne-Marie Rosser — CEO of creative agency VSA Partners — shares her cross-generational vision for a new brand of leadership.
Two scenes: Top shows climbers on an ice-covered terrain, embodying fun and success. Bottom captures an airplane in flight against a clear sky.
Fun in business is no laughing matter — it can create a golden strategic advantage and bring serious success in the long term.
A large, intricate machine with metallic components and blue scaffolding in a laboratory setting. Numerous cables and pipes are connected to the central structure.
LHC scientists just showed that spooky quantum entanglement applies to the highest-energy, shortest-lived particles of all: top quarks.