Winning Is Everything, Isn't It?

It's amazing how your perspective on an issue can change depending on context.

My son had the first game of his "baseball playoffs" last evening. His team was playing a team that had beaten them twice before. They were a good team and had won by a HUGE margin the last couple of times they met. Well, my son's team just romped to a massive victory, winning by over ten runs. Not being a baseball fan at all, I enjoyed watching them win, but got into a mild argument with my friend (who was visiting) about the importance of the win and how excited my son should be about winning by such a big margin. I said something to the effect of "big deal, it's just kids, it doesn't matter who wins, I feel sorry for the team that lost, he shouldn't gloat too much ..." He said that there's something about winning that is contagious and that winning should be encouraged just as much as playing. He suggested that I should be excited about the win and convey that excitement to my son rather than just brushing off the win as "just a lucky win."

While pondering this, I realized that even though I considered winning "no big deal" when it came to sports, I did consider it abig deal when it came to academics. So many times I have told my son that it is not good enough to do well in school and get okay grades. He has to be better than everyone else in the class. Isn't that the same as emphasizing "winning" over just "playing the game"?

Academics & The Real World

I am in Boulder today and tomorrow. I had an interesting conversation with a colleague here about the state of our discipline and whether the "real world" is moving much further ahead than us academics.

It is not whether academics are smart or whether we have the ability to make significant contributions. It is whether we are focusing on the right things and not giving enough attention to the phenomena that make a difference in the real world. In an effort to keep our research interesting, are we moving towards studying increasingly "fringe" phenomena? That is, are we getting so focused on publishing "interesting" research that we're studying behavior that is so weird and active under such special conditions that they have little relation to "normal" consumer behavior?

This is well beyond the "academic" vs. "real world" research. I don't imply that all research should have immediate application to the real world. It's just that we may need to study esoteric issues that may have no immediate application, but are rooted in normal consumer behavior over strange quirks in behavior under very specific conditions.

Obviously a very complex issue that has no easy answers. But, thought-provoking nonetheless. I now have more to think about (and argue with my colleagues about).