By Francis Moran

We’re not big television watchers in our household but like many families in Canada and around the world, we’re putting in a fair bit of time these days with the world’s second-largest (after football’s World Cup) sporting extravaganza, the Olympics. One night last week, it was the women’s halfpipe competition that had my wife and me most excited and the no-holds-barred attitude of these brilliant athletes, plus the controversial “Own the Podium” program that has Canada’s Olympians focused far more on winning than on merely participating and doing well, got me thinking about the pursuit of excellence in other arenas. Like tech marketing.

Let me explain.

The eventual winner of the women’s halfpipe, Australian boarder Torah Bright, fell on the first of her two runs. On the second run, Bright was the very first in the field of competitors to hit the pipe and she nailed an amazing routine and scored a dazzling 45.0 out of a possible 50 points to seize first place. It was then up to the rest of the women, including two highly favoured American competitors, to put in runs that would score better than that.

And here’s where I saw something in many of these athletes that technology companies would do well to emulate. They refused to hold back, to give up in the face of seemingly unbeatable competition, or to tone down their routines so they could finish safely, but in second. The outcome was that nearly all the heavily ranked favourites crashed in the pipe as they did the only thing they could do — pull out all the stops in a high-risk, go-for-broke, all-or-nothing shot at first place.

The same shoot-for-the-stars mentality is behind Canada’s “Own the Podium” program, a well-funded $145-million, pursuit of excellence that set as the target for Canada’s team in these Winter Olympics nothing less than first place in the overall medal standings. It reflected an audaciousness that is terribly uncommon for Canadians in almost all walks of life and it’s been drawing criticism here at home from people who say it’s unsporting of us and even that it puts undue pressure on the athletes. As the prospects of our team achieving that goal became ever slimmer this past week, the chorus of criticism swelled even louder.

I have to say that this sort of winning-is-somehow-un-Canadian attitude infects far more than our sports; it most certainly infects technology entrepreneurs in this country.

Far too many new technology companies play it far too safe. They husband their resources and set far-too-modest objectives for themselves for fear of failure. Here are two critical lessons they could learn from the Olympics.

1. Like the women who followed Torah Bright into the halfpipe, go for broke. Sure, you might well crash and burn, but you’ll do so quickly, the practice will stand you in good stead for your next run for gold and if, like all the women I saw, you come up with a smile on your face and a gleam in your eye that can only come from knowing you gave it your all, everyone who backed you on this crashed run will back you on your next attempt.

2. Set what former Tundra CEO Jim Roche likes to call “big hairy audacious objectives,” just like the Canadian Olympic Committee did with its “Own the podium” program. Was it too audacious an objective now that it has been proven to have been too ambitious? Not in the least. Coming up short doesn’t mean we failed; it most certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have set that objective in the first place. It means that in sports, as in business and most every other aspect of life, the competition can still win no matter how well you play. And who knows how many of the athletes who did win medals and who turned in personal bests did so because they were inspired by this objective?

The bottom line is that if you don’t think you can win, you won’t.

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