"The reason why sport is a Top-10 global industry? Spectacular Drama. With victors and the vanquished. This is what the dramatic America’s Cup in San Francisco has ultimately been about, with a spectacular result for Oracle and Jimmy Spithill/Ben Ainsley and for the vision of Russell Coutts and Mr Incredible Larry Ellison. America will feel great about this win; that it has been against a nation of five million makes our role in it all the more significant. The elements of Oracle’s turnaround from 1-8 sudden death will be studied at leadership and innovation schools for decades. What occurred? Deep observation, technical analysis and assimilation, rapid ideation, incisive decision-making, fast kaizen everywhere, smart personnel changes (resulting in a highly communicative afterguard, whereas we seemed to clam up), mental toughness, a lot of chatter, and of course deep resources – all resulting in a rocket of a boat. It would have been wonderful for New Zealand to have won the America’s Cup, and the ride to 8-1 was terrific; thanks Team New Zealand for the magical memories. There will be a lot of head-gnashing and I would prefer to skip this whole part of the grieving process and go straight for the learnings. I showed two “emotional heatmaps” in my August TEDx talk on New Zealand nation branding, and asked the question “how do we become more like California?” New Zealand is generally perceived as friendly, warm, easy-going, kind, balanced; California is perceived as creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, passionate, a leader. What type of psychic engineering and encouragement do we need for New Zealand to achieve attitude and performance upgrades; not to lose goodness, but to add a decisive edge. I ask this question seriously because going to that place of ugly invective that we experienced after successive All Black World Cup defeats is pointless (try being a New York sports fan, the Giants won the Superbowl two years ago and last weekend lost to North Carolina 0-30; as for the Yankees, don’t ask). Let’s divert this energy to somewhere positive. There is huge positioning to drive right now for our specialist design, engineering, manufacturing and services excellence. New Zealanders had a very significant role in designing and building these jaw-dropping boats, perfected how to sail them, and took us to the edge of victory (“edge”, in all its meanings, was a metaphor that permeated media coverage of the regatta). Here’s recognition and applause for our team, our sailors, government, sponsors and supporters for the thrills you brought us. Watching and listening to the races from New York with an all-US commentary team and with daily Times and WSJ coverage, I see that the messages are very positive for New Zealand’s reputation, engendering incredible respect and affection that may in fact be where our afterburners reside. Let’s do something really positive with this Aotearoa experience. We need to positively move our national character forward with 2-3 key learnings, keep wave after wave of export initiatives going forth, suffuse the world with New Zealandness (Lorde! PJ!) and absorb into ourselves sharp global insights and influences lest we develop the lockjaw that comes from an island mentality. In fact the ideal cup catharsis could be a joint Emirates Team New Zealand/Oracle Team USA ticketertape parade down Queen Street, with the America’s Cup, and with the entire Auckland boatbuilding industry. Talk about global photo opportunity." Our journey calls for grit, guts and genius. The dream is constant: “Winning the World from the Edge.” - NZEDGE.COM
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 05:08:21 +0000
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