Startup inspirations from Viswanathan Anand
Author: Ashish Sinha | Nov 18 2007 | Entrepreneurship| Email This Post
What inspirations can startups derive from World chess champ, Viswanathan Anand? Patience? Consistency?
Well, chess is more than a mind game and here are Vishy’s golden tips that can be applied to any startup/business:
- Don’t get too absorbed in the game. A lot of chess players get too absorbed in the game, and try to get to the bottom of it. But, that’s essentially a distraction.
This may fly in the face of perfectionists — it’s not the perfectionists who get the market share, but those who give the right stuff at the right time. - Tension helps you concentrate and be alert. Feel the pressure, but don’t worry about things you can’t control: Tension helps you concentrate well. Being relaxed may be dangerous.
- Know what your goals are: Seeking perfection may be a distraction: In chess, you have to learn what your goal is. Win the game, score points. It is a fascinating game and you can get lost in it. But the goal is not to make the perfect move, not to get into the bottom of a position. It’s simply to trick the opponent to win the game.
- Strive for objectivity: You may be optimistic or pessimistic, but be realistic: You must know where you stand. First analyse your position and get an objective feel of it. Objectivity is a face you show to yourself. Be merciless with yourself.
- Know your opponent: What is his goal, what are his favourite lines, is he deviating, why? Look beyond the board: Chess is all about applying game theory. You always think in terms of what your opponent will do, how he will respond. Again, in chess, most people specialise in something. Nobody does everything. Understanding that is important. If your opponent does something out of his normal range, ask why? And the answer could be —he’s now trying to specialise in a new area; he’s trying to expand his game; his favourite line, at the moment, is in trouble and he’s not done repair work or he could be bluffing.
- Analysis and sharpen intuition: Intuition is often used as a substitute for calculation. If there is some move that’s winning, and you know it’s winning, that’s not intuition. Intuition is when you make leaps into the dark. But it’s very difficult to draw lines between intuition and strategic thinking. If you calculate a lot, even if you don’t get till the end, your guess is going to be better.
- Expand your horizons: We discard the rubbish efficiently. But that rubbish is not all rubbish. There could be a lot of gems in that.
- When you lose, move on to the next battle: Handling defeat is usually just impossible. It’s useful to learn to be disciplined and put it out of your head.
[source: ET]
What do you think?
7 People have left comments on this post
“Tension helps you concentrate well”: This happened me a lot and i always develop pressure myself in order to move to next level. If person mind kept calm, mind stop thinking and that person become stagnat in life, resulting zero ROI of his birth on earth.
Person Success is the menace, it pulls smart people/person to think and it let person cant lose in battle.
Keep solving math puzzles, discuss with similar mindset to keep honing your brain.
If brain kept busy, its efficiency increases as said Operating System Keeps CPU always busy. & More load on Electric Tranformer, more is the effiiciency.
“few players almost created a riot, and others took it in the right spirit”.
Honestly to say: All indian Entrepreneurs and Startups should Digest each and every topic and comments on this Blog. Its vital feedback for those guys which help to improve thier product.
NO ONE is doing PASSIONATELY what pluggd.in is doing. Before the pluggd.in borned i was seeing only big guys news on blogspree, but now its so facinating to read about indian startup on pluggd.in.
Pluggd.in is only true Techcrunch of INDIA
“Tension helps you concentrate and be alert” -
Amitabh Bachchan, has time and again shared how scared he is in front of camera. It’s that “scary feeling” that makes him a perfectionist! It’s the fear of failure that has made him dare to do tons of things!!
Great post! And yeah “Pluggd.in is only true Techcrunch of INDIA” !
“Strive for Objectivity” - by far this is the most difficult and hence the most important one to conquer. The “riot” we witnessed earlier could be partly attributed to the difficulty in objectively digesting the comments.
The other one for me is the first one about “Don’t get too absorbed in the game”. It’s easy to get carried away and lose focus - you really need well-meaning folks around you to help you hold the horses (technology, user-need, evolving market, bottom-line, …)
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