

The Business School of Extreme Aerial Surfing

John Seely Brown, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation

Entrepreneurship isn’t just a sport; it’s extreme. John Seely Brown, Deloitte Center for the Edge’s Independent Co-Chairman, paid attention when suddenly five of the globe’s top aerial surfers originated from the same place. Why the sudden regional success? Though fierce competitors, they all knew one another and collectively benchmarked from other surfers. They recorded and studied one another’s achievements and flaws, and appropriated ideas from adjacent verticals, such as skateboarding, mountain biking, etc. Collectively, they improved their personal performance, and simultaneously built up the local ecosystem en masse. Seely Brown points out these passion-fueled tactics and suggests that entrepreneurs use this model to expand their personal performance and build success to benefit their business community.