Ideas start with ourselves. In sports, being familiar with or knowing the playfield has been debated to a great extend about how this made a difference to obtain a competitive advantage over the local team.

At the same time, this has had to do with the kind of grass and the size of the field. But at the end all teams obtained the same victory rate playing at home.

The question lies in not having found a real differentiating factor that could give any team a competitive advantage over its adversaries, beyond the advantage of playing at home.

The quality of the team counts and a bigger budget can attract more talent and, therefore, more victories.

Then, am I just saying that the team with more resources is the one able to attract more talent and therefore capable of improving its victory rate? Or, on the other hand, a team on a lower budget will never be able to get a talented and competitive team on low wages?

To both questions the answer is no. As the film Moneyball points out, it’s about breaking the rules.

Moneyball

Being on a bigger budget enables any team to get the most valuable players, but this does not guarantee any success in terms of direct cost effectiveness, in other words, victories. As the film Moneyball points out, it is not about buying players, but victories.

Moneyball is about the real experience of doing things in a different way to improve the outcome. It reflects innovation in sports. It is about watching things from all different perspectives, it is about trying out things, experiencing and connecting ideas.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, became well known for getting victories with the “Moneyball” method. This method was based on applying statistical analysis (known as sabermetrics) to players, which has led teams to reconsider how they evaluate players. In other words, a specific software was used to form a very competitive team on a lower budget than other teams using statistical analysis to coordinate players and to figure out winner strategies.

He saw baseball from a different point of view, he researched until he adjusted the method and came out with a set of basic ideas using statistics.

Guardiola

On the other hand, there is Guardiola, at his time leading Barcelona Football Club. Not only won and obtained success due to the big stars and the most valuable players the Club could get.

He came up with a differentiating factor, doing things in a different and new way. Through observation and questioning, Guardiola analyzed his opponents’ games, gathering essential information, generating new strategies and new ways to play to find come up with creative solutions. An example of this was the false 9 or the false center forward.

Conclusions

Being familiar with something and having the local knowledge are not enough to reach competitive advantage and success. On the contrary, it might become counterproductive and ineffective, because it prevents from seeing opportunities.

A set of factors must be gathered to produce real competitive advantages:

-The best ideas start in ourselves.

– Facts must be analyzed from different points of view, observing and questioning the way thing are done to do it in a new way with an improved and better outcome.

-Research and test error without fear is basic.

-Connecting ideas, even the existing ones, becomes the core, the virtue is putting them together.

This set of factors will make anyone more creative, overcoming not only needs, but searching new opportunities.