Management Topics Learning Innovation from WrestleMania
by Josef Martens, PhD, CSP Y
ou can often find valuable and out-of-the-box inspiration in fields that are not immediately
connected with your work. Recently, I was struck by two decisions made by the WWE, the organization that owns and manages many professional wrestling events. Both decisions show their powerful capacity for innovation. They are both connected with their
biggest event of the year: WrestleMania. If you have ever seen any of these events, the immediate appearance is flamboyant, loud, and over-the-top. Ask yourself for a moment what kind of corporate culture you expect behind this appearance.
Behind the outside appearance of
traditional values, lies a business culture that’s sharp, shrewd, progressive, and innovative. For a long time they have embraced the professional code of Kayfabe. This code requires that what is really a staged and choreographed event is made to appear real to the public. It’s the notion of a make- believe reality. The code extends outside the ring, and includes the stories created around the actors. The feuds, gimmicks, and everything else that is narrated about each character, is all part of the make-believe world of wrestling. Kayfabe requires that the appearance of a real fight and story is maintained and that no one acknowledges that it’s all fake. Breaking this code is similar to an actor on stage, stepping out of role and acknowledging to the audience that she is an actor playing a character. For decades people in the business
believed that maintaining Kayfabe was essential to the success of wrestling. This changed in a fight in 1995. One fighter was scheduled to retire after one more fight. So the official story is told, his last fight was against his archenemy, with which he had a bitter feud off stage. The plan in Kayfabe was that it would
56 ❘ September 2019 ®
be their last face-off; a fight to settle everything, for all time. Because it was one of the fighter’s
last match, the other chose to honor the occasion. After what seemed a grueling fight, resulting in painful injuries to both opponents, the two fighters hugged each other, celebrated, and ostensibly had no injuries, whatsoever. They weren’t enemies. They were friends. They weren’t injured. They were performing. The veil was lifted, and for the first time, it was confirmed to the public that the fights and the stories are fake. After a short outcry, WrestleMania decided to embrace the situation and acknowledge how the fights really work. They turned to honesty when dealing with their audience. What held them back before was the fear of the audience’s reaction. They thought the audience would turn away because it’s not real. In fact, what did happen was the audience cheered about it, as well as grew in size. They all loved the fact that it’s all a show and entertainment. The innovation: honesty. The result:
significant growth. Their
second
breakthrough
innovation happened this year in April. For the first time in WrestleMania history, the main event was a fight between female fighters. I won’t go into any gender issues here, because they’re beside the point. What matters here is that they chose to do something bold. To put it in business terms, they made the choice to change a key feature of the highest visibility, as well as modify the highest revenue generating product. They had the courage to make this change, even though (or maybe because) the revenue of this product had been declining in recent years. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people inside the sport, such as fighters, agents, advisors and consultants, have told them not to do this. They probably told them the risk is too large, or that it might alienate core fans, and “why not try it out in a smaller and safer setting?” They did it anyway. The innovation: changing a key feature of the main product. The result: an overwhelming amount of positive
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