What entrepreneurship can learn from youth sport

1-minute summary

In this episode of his CEO diary, Christoph Standl talks about long-term thinking in a world that is becoming ever more short-term – from an unusual angle: youth sport, especially football. Young athletes learn something early there that is incredibly important for entrepreneurs too: success doesn't happen overnight. With a successful footballer we usually only see the finished result – big games, full stadiums, Champions League. What we don't see are the many years before: countless training sessions, defeats, games on small pitches, days when nothing works. And still the young player is back on the pitch at the next training session – that is exactly what endurance means. Through sport, children and teenagers learn to win and lose together, discipline, team spirit and how to deal with criticism, and above all: if you want to get better, you have to keep training. After twelve years of Tourismus Interaktiv he sees an astonishing number of parallels to entrepreneurship: a company, too, has to train constantly, improve its products, learn from mistakes, try new things. Sometimes you win an order, sometimes you lose it; sometimes an idea works, sometimes it doesn't. What matters is what happens afterwards – go home and give up, or analyse what can be done better and compete again next time. Talent can give you a head start, but long-term success comes from training, discipline and endurance. Perhaps adults, too, should sometimes behave a little more like young athletes again: train, make mistakes, learn from them and compete again. Big changes often begin with small daily steps.