The college football season is hitting rival games, conference championships, and playoff season. Similar to many Alabamans, I may be a little too invested in the SEC football season and the upcoming bowl bids. Regardless of your preferred team, most of us yearn for solid competition in the sports we either play or watch. We enjoy seeing how each team can challenge themselves and each other and the upsets or comebacks that seem unbelievable. We often consider it bad sportsmanship to immediately call suspicion after a surprising loss.
Competition doesn’t only exist on the field. It also exists in the market. So why then do we seem not to greet technology disruptors’ success with the same sense of pride and excitement as an upset in sports? Instead, it seems policymakers and pundits meet success with skepticism, similar to a team or fans that immediately rush to blame the refs or call the other team cheaters rather than admitting they got outplayed.
The reality is that technological disruptors and sports upsets have a lot in common. Before their disruption, the records, dynasties, and top teams often seem as if they will never be beaten. Headlines often talk about looking for the next great in a team or a player that resembles a current great. Sometimes that works, but often the next great is the player or team that sees the game differently or finds a unique way to win or excel that was previously ignored.
The same is true with the tech sector. Headlines will question who is the next Facebook, Google, or previously the next AOL. But often times, the next big thing is the company that provides a completely different and disruptive product that we couldn’t have predicted.
The reality is that, just as in sports, the signs of the next great player are often there but only visible to a few. If we only look for the players who play like Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, we might miss some of the most exciting and innovative changes to the game.
The same is often the case with technological disruption and innovation. For example, some policymakers are quick to question Nvidia’s seemingly rapid success in the AI chip market, with some even calling for antitrust investigations. Yet, only a few would have been aware of the chipmaker prior to the AI boom, mostly for its connection to video games. The overnight success of an innovative product often comes from long-term investment and research, taking risks, and seeing things differently than those around you, as does an unexpected upset in sports.
When precisely will this disruption occur is not easy to predict in sports or the tech market. Sometimes we can see it coming through regular improvement and investment. In other cases, innovations are so disruptive that competitors have to take time to figure out how to respond to truly compete at the same level. After all, as Bear Bryant once said, “Little things make the difference. Everyone is well prepared in the big things, but only the winners perfect the little things.”
Of course, any sport, similar to the market, has its rules. At times, we unfortunately find out that an upset wasn’t the tale of hard work, luck, and innovation that we thought it was, but rather one of doping, deflated balls, or recruiting violations. Most of us, however, don’t presume those things when we first hear about an upset or a fallen record. Perhaps we should do the same when it comes to the success of our leading tech companies and the rise of new innovative products.
It can be difficult at times to cheer against rivals. But at the end of the day, the beauty of competition in sports is that it is ultimately about the love of the same game. Similarly, in the tech sector, we shouldn’t presume that big is bad or that big is unstoppable. Instead, we should focus on the “love of the game” in the ways that technological innovation and disruption improve our lives regardless of the size of the company it comes from.