Steve Ballmer Says Businesses Can Learn Accountability From Sports Teams

By Rolfe Winkler 

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- Nothing sells sports tickets like winning a championship.

Former Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer says that is perhaps the most obvious insight he has learned in his time owning the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, but it has taught him lessons for business.

Customers and shareholders assess businesses. "But they're casual," Mr. Ballmer said at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech D.Live conference on Monday. "Casual compared to the millions of fans who are sitting there studying every move, who have access to all the performance data that you do."

Assessing how well teams work? In business, it isn't so easy to know how well teams are performing at all times. "Every 24 seconds, everybody knows how our teamwork is," said Mr. Ballmer, referencing the shot clock in basketball.

"You want accountability? Sports," Mr. Ballmer said. "I find the level of accountability frightfully more powerful than I did when I was CEO" of Microsoft.

There are similarities between running a sports enterprise and other kinds of businesses, Mr. Ballmer said: "It's all about the product, stupid."

For the Clippers, Mr. Ballmer is looking for growth by wringing extra revenue out of his superfans, in part through a deal with augmented reality company Second Spectrum that is providing more advanced sports analytics than have previously been available.

Write to Rolfe Winkler at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 12, 2018 19:41 ET (00:41 GMT)

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