The Infinite Game: How Great Businesses Achieve Long-lasting Success

we are naturally inclined to seek out immediate solutions to uncomfortable problems and prioritize quick wins to advance our ambitions.

Any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow five essential practices: Advance a Just Cause Build Trusting Teams Study your Worthy Rivals Prepare for Existential Flexibility Demonstrate the Courage to Lead

This is how movements come to be. It starts with a few people. Their idealized vision of the future attracts believers.

when there is a Just Cause, a reason to come to work that is bigger than any particular win,

Being for is about inviting all to join in common cause.

Where a finite-minded player makes products they think they can sell to people, the infinite-minded player makes products that people want to buy. The former is primarily focused on how the sale of those products benefits the company; the latter is primarily focused on how the products benefit those who buy them.

But we do not have to have our own Just Cause, we can choose to join someone else’s.

If there are at least two players, a game exists. And there are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games. Finite games are played by known players. They have fixed rules. And there is an agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game.

a Just Cause is a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist.