Olivia: Everything you've been taught about winning is probably wrong. That drive to be number one, to beat the competition at all costs? It might be the very thing holding you, your company, and even your family back. We’re about to find out why. Jackson: That’s a bold claim, Olivia. It feels like our entire culture is built on the idea that competition brings out the best in us. The Super Bowl, the Fortune 500, even getting into college. It’s all a contest. Olivia: It is. And that’s exactly the premise of this incredible, award-winning book we're diving into today: A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better Than the Competition by Margaret Heffernan. Jackson: Heffernan is fascinating. She's not just an academic; she's been a CEO for multiple companies and a producer at the BBC for over a decade. So she's seen this from the inside, from both the corporate and creative worlds. Olivia: Exactly. Which gives her this unique, pragmatic lens. And she starts her argument in the most unexpected, visceral place imaginable: a demolition derby at a county fair in New Hampshire. Jackson: A demolition derby? Okay, you have my attention. How does a bunch of cars smashing into each other explain anything about my life? Olivia: Well, she describes this scene: families cheering, the smell of fried dough, and then this brutal, chaotic spectacle of cars reversing and crashing into each other until only one is left, sputtering amidst the wreckage. She sees it as a perfect, if disturbing, parable for modern society. Jackson: A microcosm of our world. Institutions, ideas, even people, just crashing into each other in a contest with winners and losers, leaving a lot of wreckage behind. Olivia: Precisely. It’s loud, it’s destructive, and we applaud it as entertainment. Heffernan argues this has become our default mode. When we don't know what to do, we just say, "Let them compete." But she asks a powerful question: what if this isn't the only way? What if it's actually the worst way?

Jackson: Okay, a demolition derby is brutal, but how does that connect to, say, my office job or my family? It feels like a bit of a leap. Olivia: It’s less of a leap than you’d think. Heffernan brings it right into the home, to the most intimate battleground we all know: the family. She tells this incredible story about a family she calls the Hobbs. Three sons: Harry, eleven; Tom, eight; and Oliver, four. Jackson: Oh boy. I can already feel the tension. Olivia: It's relentless. The parents are loving, they have a comfortable home, there's no scarcity of resources. But the boys are in a constant, exhausting state of competition. The mother, Alice, keeps a diary. One entry reads: "Harry has to be top dog; he has to be." When she brings out a cake, Harry shouts, "I want the first one!" He grabs it before anyone else can. Jackson: That sounds… familiar. And exhausting for the parents. Olivia: Completely. It’s not just cake. It’s who gets the last of the chocolate spread, who gets the new rugby ball. In one almost comical, but telling, incident, the youngest, Oliver, gets a cake at a party. The boys argue over it, and in the chaos, the dog licks a piece. To win the argument, Harry, the oldest, grabs the dog-licked piece and eats it anyway. Jackson: Wow. He'd rather eat a dog-licked piece of cake than lose. That says it all. But isn't some of this just 'boys will be boys'? Where does it become truly toxic? Olivia: That's the crucial question. Heffernan argues it becomes toxic when it's not mediated and when it becomes the only way to relate to others. She presents a much darker story to show the long-term consequences: the story of Diane Wilson. Jackson: Okay, what happened to Diane? Olivia: Diane grew up with an older sister, Beth, who was academically brilliant. Their mother constantly pitted them against each other. Diane said, "I was born one day before my sister Beth’s birthday. From her perspective, I stole her thunder!" And that rivalry defined their entire lives. Jackson: How so? Olivia: Beth would publicly humiliate Diane, belittling her at school. When Diane found a passion for dance, Beth dismissed it as a "third-rate art." The competition was so intense that Diane began to unconsciously sabotage herself to avoid her sister's envy and attacks. She wrote, "As long as I didn’t earn much money, didn’t have any qualifications, didn’t have a house, wasn’t like her, I imagined she wouldn’t envy me or attack me." Jackson: That's just tragic. It's like her entire life became a reaction to this one relationship. She made herself smaller to keep the peace. Olivia: Exactly. And this unresolved rivalry had a lasting impact. As an adult, Diane found it incredibly difficult to collaborate, especially with other women. She was always defensive, always anxious, always struggling to assert her own point of view without feeling like she was in a fight. Jackson: So this isn't just about sibling squabbles. It's about how our earliest experiences with competition can wire our brains for life. It can create what Heffernan calls "hypercompetitiveness." Olivia: Yes, and she defines it perfectly: "Hypercompetitive people feel successful only when others lose." They need to dominate. She shares the story of her own father, who grew up in poverty and became so hypercompetitive that he aimed to "break his opponent's spine" in negotiations. He was professionally successful but deeply isolated. He was retired early because no one wanted to work with him. Jackson: It’s like a software bug that corrupts the entire operating system. You might win a few games, but eventually, the whole system crashes because it can't connect with anything else. Olivia: That's a perfect analogy. And Heffernan shows this bug at play in the business world with the story of a brilliant BBC trainee named Tim. Double first from Oxford, incredibly smart, but utterly hypercompetitive. He refused to take advice from his experienced film crew. Jackson: Let me guess, it didn't end well. Olivia: It was a disaster. The crew, who were prize-winning technicians, eventually just gave up trying to help him. They did exactly what he said, even when they knew it was wrong. The final program was a mess and had to be completely reshot. Tim just couldn't collaborate. He moved from company to company, his intelligence always getting him in the door, but his inability to work with others always getting him pushed out. Jackson: So the drive to win, to be the smartest person in the room, actually made him fail. It’s a paradox. Olivia: It is. And it's the core of Heffernan's critique. This relentless focus on individual winning, on being the lone hero, is an illusion. And it's a destructive one.

Jackson: Okay, so competition can be a disaster. It can turn us into bullies or make us shrink. It's a bit bleak. Is there an alternative? What's the 'bigger prize' Heffernan is talking about? Olivia: Absolutely. And this is where the book gets really hopeful. Heffernan shows us companies that have completely rejected this model and have become wildly successful because of it. Take W. L. Gore & Associates—the people who make Gore-Tex fabric. Jackson: Right, the waterproof stuff. I assume they have a normal corporate structure? Olivia: Not at all. They are famous for having what they call a "lattice" organization. There are no bosses. No managers. No organizational charts. Jackson: Hold on. No bosses? How does anything get done? Who decides what projects to work on? It sounds like beautiful, creative chaos. Olivia: It’s structured, just not hierarchical. When you join Gore, you're assigned a sponsor, not a boss. Your sponsor's job is to help you find a team or a project where you can make a real contribution. Leadership is based on "followership." You're a leader if you can persuade people to follow you and commit to your project. Jackson: So authority isn't assigned, it's earned. You have to actually be good at leading people, not just have the right title. Olivia: Precisely. And your commitments aren't to a boss, but to the team. It fosters this incredible culture of trust and personal responsibility. They believe that great work is done together, that efficiency is gained by trust, and that psychological safety opens the floodgates of the mind. Jackson: It sounds like a jazz band. You have a group of virtuosos, and they listen to each other and improvise to create something that no single person could have planned. Olivia: That's a fantastic analogy. And it works. Gore is a powerhouse of innovation with a stellar track record for patents and has never had a single year of losses. And to show this isn't just a one-off fluke, Heffernan also points to Morning Star, one of the world's largest tomato producers. Jackson: A tomato company? Olivia: A tomato company that operates on a similar principle of self-management. There are no employees, only "colleagues." Everyone is responsible for acquiring their own tools, for negotiating their responsibilities with their peers, and for holding each other accountable. Jackson: That's wild. So you have factory workers essentially acting as their own managers, negotiating with each other to get the job done. Olivia: Yes, and it's incredibly effective. It pushes responsibility and decision-making down to the people who are actually doing the work. They have the freedom to solve problems creatively, and they have a real stake in the outcome. Jackson: Ah, so the 'bigger prize' isn't just a bigger paycheck, though I'm sure that's part of it. It's the freedom to create, the trust of your colleagues, the feeling of building something meaningful together. It's a richer, more human experience. Olivia: That's the heart of it. The prize is social capital. It's the dense network of trust, reciprocity, and shared purpose that allows people to do their best work. Competition erodes that capital. Collaboration builds it.

Jackson: It’s a powerful shift in thinking. We're so used to seeing success as a mountain with only one spot at the top. Heffernan is saying that’s the wrong mountain. The real goal is to build a thriving, interconnected ecosystem. Olivia: Exactly. Heffernan's argument is that we've been sold a bill of goods. We think competition is the engine of progress, but it's often the brake. It creates a world of demolition derbies and broken relationships, where everyone is either a winner or a loser, and so much energy is wasted on the fight itself. Jackson: While collaboration, which we often dismiss as 'soft' or inefficient, is actually the source of the most robust, creative, and resilient work. It’s not about eliminating conflict, but as she says, creating a safe place to resolve it. Olivia: Right. She quotes a neuropsychiatrist who says, "Cells that fire together wire together." The more we practice collaboration, the better our brains get at it. The work of a family, or a company, isn't to avoid arguments, but to create a safe place to have them with people who won't give up on each other. Jackson: That’s a profound thought. It’s not about being nice; it’s about being committed to a shared outcome, even when it’s hard. It’s about building something instead of just trying to win something. Olivia: And that's the bigger prize. It's the difference between a trophy that collects dust on a shelf and a community that continues to grow and create value long after the game is over. Jackson: It makes you wonder, where in your own life—at work, at home—are you playing a zero-sum game when you could be aiming for a bigger prize together? Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.