The most important lesson from yesterday’s national championship is that to be truly successful, you must always be working to improve. Last year, when Kentucky won the national championship, I wrote a piece on how it highlighted the importance of recruiting great talent. This year the lesson is that great leaders (and I definitely put Pitino in that category) never take a break on working to make their organizations better.
What was particularly illuminating was Rick Pitino’s (the coach of Louisville) comment this morning during a radio interview that he “broke down” tape already from the game. For those who are not sports, or basketball, fans, a coach spends the majority of his time watching tapes of his games so he understands what his team is doing right and wrong and tape of opponents so he knows their strengths and weaknesses. Pitino’s need to break down tape highlights several things: Continue reading “Lessons for the game industry from Louisville’s national championship”
The big buzz phrase in the Bay Area the last year or so has been “growth hacking,” and the ideas behind it can help significantly game companies. The underlying principle in the phrase is that modern start-ups should be focused on using the new tools available via technology to grow rapidly their user base rather than relying on older, sometimes outdated, marketing techniques. Growth—unlike marketing—usually encompasses multiple aspects of an organization, with the growth team not only bringing in users but also working with the product team to optimize the product for growth. It stresses the importance of product to growth and how the two should work together rather than having marketing set aside in a corner. The phrase itself was coined by 
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