Changing the Scoreboard

Economics is a game. And the current state of play revolves around winners and losers. This is called a zero-sum game, where my win equates to your loss. In fact, I can only win when you lose.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

What if there was a way to change the scoreboard so that everyone is a winner? An equal measure of value that scored the league as a whole instead of the players or the teams they played on?

Our current economic system is analogous to a kid’s game of musical chairs: we all run in circles fighting for scarce resources until winners and losers are decided.

We’re still playing an outdated game of survival. The deep psychological roots embedded in our society have stymied innovation and misallocated our resources.

Educational institutions, the workplace, the media. All of these complex social structures invite us—the players—to play in a hopeless game of winners and losers.

When the game is set up this way, the subsequent incentives reinforce crab-bucket mentality. To earn points in such a game, I have to focus on things that might not necessarily be the best things to focus on. And I must focus on them at the expense of others.

As noted in The Social Dilemma, some of the best minds of our time are working on how to get people to click or scroll. More usage = more points on the scoreboard.

The problem with “best,” however, is that it’s subjective, contextual, and directly related to incentives.

Best for who? Best given what purpose?

When we gather ‘round the table for Thanksgiving, everyone wins. But the definition of a win is different for every individual.

A win for Uncle Jerry means dark meat, stuffing, whipped potatoes and gravy all over the place. A win for little Sally is a Tofurkey with a side of sweet potato mash.

There’s no musical chairs, there’s a seat at the table for each person. There’s a unifying incentive that trumps the concept of zero-sum.

Every game has a scoreboard.

Why?

Because the scoreboard is a reflection of value.

Report cards for school. The ticker for public companies. the xyz

Consider pee-wee football. The parents say, “it’s about having fun” but then the kids look up at the scoreboard and see that they’re losing. Not so fun.

I recently went to my 4-year-old nephew’s soccer game and there was no scoreboard in sight. It’s not because the kids can barely count, it’s because there’s no value in the scoreboard for them. They just want to get out there, run around, and kick the ball.

And when that happens, there are no losers. Everyone has fun and everyone wins.

If the game is about having fun, the scoreboard should reflect that. And the method by which teams accumulate points would change in kind.

New games are starting to emerge, though, where the definition of value is being reconsidered and recalibrated.

The concept of the triple bottom line has started to gain traction in the last decade, an idea that invites businesses to change the scoreboard, and the method by which they accumulate points.

They not only earn points by winning at the financial game (revenue, profit, or growth rate) but also by their environmental and social impact. A win for the triple bottom business is a win for more people than those businesses scoring themselves on a single bottom line.

This concept didn’t just appear out of thin air, it stemmed from a change in what people cared about. When more people value the environment, the environment gets factored into the net score.

When values change, incentives change. And the scoreboard follows suit.

In some cases, different scoreboards lead to different games altogether.

X-Prize is a concrete example of changing the game altogether. The scoreboard is created, the rules of the game set, and everyone competes not for the sake of winning but for the sake of playing.

There are no “losers” because the end result is one in which everyone benefits. You don’t need a participation trophy when you play the game for the fun of it.

The real question is: what game do we want to play?

Which do we value more: a city in which everyone thrives or one where only some thrive and others fight to survive?

In Call of Duty, players earn points by killing other players. In MMORPGs, players earn points and level up through trade and skill-building.

The scoreboard for executives is stock price while employees look to Net Promoter Scores to determine whether they’ve won or lost.

But what will define a “win” for cities of the future, physical or virtual?

How will we earn points?

What incentives do we want to embed in our culture?

For the longest time, we didn’t keep score for our cities. But now we’re starting to see metrics that reflect what we value.

Mobility, connectivity, accessibility, sustainability… all of these traits are emerging from evolving trends around how we live, work, and play.

Projects like Sidewalk Toronto and Maldives’ floating city—regardless of whether they’re feasible or funded—are all signs of a changing scoreboard. And design (Seapods) and technology (ReGen) are ways to earn points on that scoreboard.

This new scoreboard doesn’t score teams, it scores solutions based on how well they meet our needs. And if we know our needs, we can reverse-engineer the values and build incentive structures around them.

When the incentives change, the scoreboard changes.

Pretty soon, we’re playing a whole new game where everyone wins.