The following commentary is contributed by JL Lerit, a digital transformation and technology consultant based in Sydney, working across technology delivery, business transformation and client engagement in Australia and Southeast Asia.
I went to watch a 3×3 basketball tournament in Singapore recently expecting basketball, and I left thinking about innovation.
I knew basketball, or at least I thought I did. The version most of us recognise has five players from each team on court, two baskets and four quarters. Then I watched 3×3.
The easiest way to understand it is to imagine basketball stripped down.
Three players from each team are on court, with a fourth available as a substitute. There is one basket, half a court and just ten minutes of regulation time. Teams have only twelve seconds to attempt a shot.
Scoring is simple too. A basket from inside the arc is worth one point and a shot from beyond it is worth two. Reach 21 points first within regulation and the game ends. If neither team gets there, whoever is ahead after ten minutes wins.
You do not need to know much about basketball to understand what is happening.
What surprised me was how different that simplicity made the game feel.
There was barely time to process one possession before the next had begun. By the time I understood why people around me were reacting, the ball was already moving again. Twelve seconds leaves very little room for hesitation.
It looked like basketball with things taken away.
Yet somehow, it did not feel like less.
And since this is 3×3, it seems only right to break that thought into three.
Less Court. Less Time. A Different Game.
There is something fitting about discovering 3×3 in Singapore.
FIBA, short for the International Basketball Federation and the global governing body for basketball, introduced 3×3 at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010. The discipline later joined the Olympic programme, making its Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Sixteen years later, I was watching a FIBA 3×3 Challenger in Singapore, part of an international competition system that can lead teams towards the 3×3 World Tour.
But what interested me was not simply how the format began. It was what those changes did to the game: Fewer players, less space and less time.
Those constraints changed behaviour.
A twelve-second shot clock changes the value of time. Decisions have to be made quickly. With only three players from each team on court, movement matters and mistakes are harder to hide.
The foundations remain recognisable.
The experience does not.
Perhaps we sometimes misunderstand innovation by assuming it must begin with adding something new. Sometimes changing the constraints can change what is possible.
Innovation Does Not Always Mean Adding More
Businesses are surrounded by pressure to innovate.
Add another feature. Introduce another platform. Automate another process. Collect more data. Find somewhere to use artificial intelligence (AI).
Some of those changes can create enormous value but more is not automatically better.
Basketball was not broken. The traditional game did not need to disappear for 3×3 to exist. Familiar foundations were redesigned around a different experience.
There is an interesting parallel for businesses.
Technology conversations often begin with capability: What can this system do? What can we automate? Where can we use AI?
Perhaps another question should come first: What are we actually trying to make better?
A business can keep adding technology while making an experience more complicated for the customer or employee expected to use it.
Innovation is not measured by how much technology we introduce.
It is measured by what becomes better because of it. Sometimes innovation is addition. Sometimes it is subtraction.
Sophisticated Underneath, Simple to Experience
Perhaps the strongest thing about watching 3×3 for the first time was how little explanation I needed before I could enjoy it.
I did not know every player or team. I did not understand every tactical decision happening on court.
But I understood the objective almost immediately.
The longer I watched, the more complexity became visible.
There is a useful lesson for technology here.
Behind a simple experience may sit complicated systems, integrations, data and processes. The person using it should not need to understand all of that.
They simply need the experience to make sense.
That principle matters even more as technology becomes more capable. The temptation is to expose more of what a system can do.
Good design often does the opposite.
It decides what the person using it actually needs.
On paper, 3×3 looks like basketball with things taken away.
In practice, those constraints created something recognisable enough to understand immediately and different enough to become its own game.
Perhaps businesses could ask the same question more often.
Not simply: What else can we add?
But: What already works, what gets in the way and what could we make better?
