The Domino Effect in Business
You’ve likely heard the term domino, used to describe a sequence of events that starts with one small action and eventually leads to greater–and sometimes catastrophic–consequences. The principle of domino is often seen in real-world situations, such as a fire or an accident. However, the idea of domino also applies to many areas of business, such as leadership and management. This is because of the Domino Effect, which states that “what goes down, must go up.”
A domino is a small oblong tile with a number of dots or blank spaces on either side, known as pips, that are used in playing games of chance and skill. The most common domino set contains 28 tiles that are arranged face down into a grid-like structure called the boneyard, or stock. Then each player draws seven tiles from the stock, and places them on their domino board (also called a domino table). The remaining dominoes in the boneyard remain face down for the duration of the game. Each player’s goal is to use the remainder of his or her hand to lay down a domino with a value that matches that of a previously laid domino, thereby creating a line of matched dominoes that ultimately falls over.
There are many different types of dominoes, and the earliest were most closely associated with Chinese game tiles. The markings on the pips originally represented the results of throwing two six-sided dice. However, European dominoes incorporated seven additional pieces to increase the variety of possible combinations. The most common extended sets include double-nine, double-12, double-15 and double-18 dominoes, with the latter allowing the highest number of unique end values.
The domino is a versatile tool for creating various types of games and layouts, both for competitive play as well as cooperative play. These games can range from simple counting-based strategies, such as bergen and muggins, to blocking games that test the players’ skill in emptying their hands. Dominoes are also an excellent educational tool for teaching counting and matching skills.
Lily Hevesh started collecting and stacking dominoes at the age of 9. Her grandparents gave her a classic 28-pack, and she quickly became addicted to setting them up in straight or curved lines and flicking the first domino over to watch the entire chain fall. Today, Hevesh is a professional domino artist who creates spectacular domino setups for movies and TV shows, and she has an enormous YouTube following. She has even worked on team projects that involved hundreds of thousands of dominoes, including a circular domino pyramid for Katy Perry’s album launch.
A domino set usually includes a variety of different colored dominoes, each with a unique pattern or design on its sides. These colors can be used to distinguish the dominoes from each other, especially when playing a color-matching game. The word “domino” derives from the French word for hood, which may refer to the cloak worn by a priest over his or her surplice at a masquerade.