47 pages • 1 hour read
Simon SinekThe Infinite Game
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek is an author and inspirational speaker who combines historical and personal anecdotes about the rise and fall of various businesses to make his argument in The Infinite Game. He is also the author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009) and Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t (2014). He gives inspirational speeches and serves as a leadership consultant for corporations. Sinek is the founder of The Optimism Company, an online learning platform that provides courses, workshops, and keynotes on leadership and organizational culture. As stated in The Infinite Game, he encourages leaders to follow a just cause, to establish organizations that endure past their own lifetimes.
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was an economist who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was one of the leaders in the Chicago school of economics, a group of intellectuals who emphasized the role of government in controlling the circulation of money. In his article “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” Friedman wrote, “[This] responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with [employer] desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society” (71). Sinek frames Friedman’s version of capitalism as finite, something that demands profits over just causes.
Dr. James P. Carse
Author of Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (1986), Dr. James P. Carse (1932-2020) provides Sinek with the theoretical framework and vocabulary for The Infinite Game. Carse was an academic and professor of history and literature of religion at New York University. After receiving Finite and Infinite Games from a friend, Sinek found Carse’s ideas “started to influence the way [he] saw the world” (225). Throughout The Infinite Game, he uses the language of finite and infinite games to argue for ethical, responsible practices.
Adam Grant
Adam Grant is an organizational psychology and popular science author. He has written books such as Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (2013), Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016), and Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (2021). He is portrayed as Sinek’s worthy rival, a person in a similar field who makes him strive to be better. With a finite mindset, Sinek initially considered Grant a competitor. He relished Grant’s failures and brooded at his successes. Eventually, Sinek and Grant met at an event where they both admitted how insecure the other made them feel. This was the moment when Sinek decided to shift to an infinite mindset, with Grant becoming someone whom he admired and read to become a better author.
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