“It is, therefore, this fluidity that presents us with an unavoidable challenge: how to contain the serious within the truly playful; that is, how to keep all our finite games in infinite play.”

― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Infinite Play Thinking is about managing and de-risking your strategic options through:

Ruling out options

Hypothesizing and weighting the probabilities captured by the portfolio of options

Deciding the time to change the portfolio strategy

Optimizing freedom to operate and financial sustainability.

Ultimately, the goal is to retain a portfolio that:

Reflects one’s hypothesis

Tests one’s hypothesis against real-world effects

Helps one to learn and adjust to real-world changes

All the time.

This is best reflected in areas of management which deals with risk, where portfolios are often considered:

Performance Management,

Product and RnD Portfolios,

Investment Portfolios,