Renewable Advantage

Sweat hits the hardwood floor. A coach loosens his tie in an attempt to unleash even louder instructions. Finely tuned, soaring athletes race against each other, time, and almost-unforgivable failure in a contest designed to test the limits of their spatial abilities, mental adeptness, and fortitude as they vie to score more baskets than the opponent in 48 adrenaline-pumping minutes. This is the game of basketball – a game followed by millions of Americans, and now televised in 212 nations in 42 languages by the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The NBA is America's, and perhaps the world's, most prestigious and popular basketball league – featuring 30 teams valued at a total of approximately $10 billion. The Indiana Pacers, one of those 30 teams, is an intriguing subject in that it was inherited from a competing basketball league (the American Basketball Association), has enjoyed a relatively sustainable advantage in competing for championships (despite never winning an NBA championship), and is now nearing the end of its convergence curve, becoming increasingly misaligned with its customers, and must contemplate plans to renew its advantage.

In this report, I provide an in-depth analysis to determine how the NBA and Indiana Pacers are classified in terms of ‘economic time' as defined by Jeffrey Williams in Renewable Advantage: Crafting Strategy through Economic Time, as well as predict a few possibilities that lie ahead.

A brief history of the NBA and its staircase strategies

The NBA achieved its tipping point and long, steady growth due to the successful implementation of a combination of staircase strategies, innovations, and isolating mechanisms throughout its history.

Staircase Strategy 1: Target major metropolitan areas

The NBA, as we know it today, was first founded as the "Basketball