Keywords

Introduction

Whereas research on community-based innovation in a sports context is replete with case studies, marketing issues and studies of entrepreneurial action, this chapter focuses on Formula E’s role as change facilitator in popular culture setting. While taking on the role as facilitator of a community-based innovation is not new to sport, the use of popular culture tools make Formula E separate from many other organizations. Apart from supporting ‘traditional’ community causes, such as paediatric cancer patients and their families through the Con Ganas de Vivir organization in Mexico City, Formula E has also ventured into communities that are less supported by sports organizations and that operationalize ‘community-based innovations’ differently than others. As we will demonstrate, Formula E has chosen a hybrid between the business approach, where the cause is supported yet not intervened in, and the sport approach, where the intervention is almost instrumental in nature.

Grouping this kind of activity as ‘empowering communities’ with partners like the Prince Albert of Monaco II Foundation and The Climate Group,Footnote 1 Formula E’s participatory solution has been an open innovation that can be defined as ‘a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries’ (Chesbrough & Bogers, 2014, p. 17). For example, in the Open Talent Call, which is part of the Positive Futures programme discussed below, instead of merely acquiring the commercial rights and grooming employees to convey the corporate message, Formula E and FIA gather talent from outside the business and train them to become sports presenters elsewhere. As the underlying goal is to present Formula E in a way that is more authentic to its core market and stakeholders, it fits the claim from Bogers et al. (2018) that open innovation will play a key role in the developed economies over the next decade, ‘not least regarding the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015–2030’ (Bogers et al., 2018, p. 11).

Against this backdrop, the chapter discusses how and whether Formula E’s community engagement aligns with community-based innovation in sport in general. We also provide a critical perspective on Formula E’s community initiatives and value propositions by exploring specific cases to discern ways of facilitating open innovation and the possible pitfalls, which may be useful to other sports organizations. By addressing the challenges of awarding events to countries that do not comply with the championship’s emphasis on diversity, equality and non-discrimination, we discuss the risks of ‘sportswashing’ and whether the fact that Formula E is present in countries like Saudi Arabia and China has more leverage than staying away for human rights reasons. The conclusion is that rather than playing politics with governments and other stakeholders, Formula E concentrates on the power of popular culture.

Developing Communities Through Sports

The relation between sport and community development is as old as sport itself. No wonder, then, that the number of projects and ideas about how to combine the two has flourished, especially since the 1970s and the birth of the sport-for-development field. But, as addressed by Schulenkorf (2012):

to achieve togetherness between diverse (groups of) people who are separated or divided—socially, culturally, politically, economically and/or geographically—they need to be brought together in consensual face-to-face contact and in social contexts where equitable interpersonal co-operation and group cohesion are fostered. (pp. 2–3)

A lot of research focuses on the circumstances that are necessary to make community-sport collaborations successful in different contexts (Anderson-Butcher et al., 2014; Wemmer et al., 2016). However, very little attention has so far been paid to how this relation could foster innovation. Although the focus is on inclusive processes and building something from below (see Schulenkorf, 2012), for sports organizations to be change agents, that is ‘external parties who help (communities) establish contact, open negotiations and develop projects for cooperation and sustainable development’ (Schulenkorf, 2010, p. 119), they need cultural skills and a sensitivity to local conditions. By emphasizing the potential for community-based innovation as the aim of this collaboration, rather than striving towards a pre-defined goal using standardized indicators, sport has a better chance of facilitating the complex and messy nature of ‘community’ as an arena for new thinking. Thus, the concept of community-based innovation is in many ways synonymous with the concept of open innovation, which Bogers et al. (2018) describe as either outbound (when enterprises reach out to the community outside their own organization) or inbound (developing ideas within the closed community of the organization).

Just as Bogers et al. (2018) differentiate between outbound and inbound open innovation, different sport contexts require different ways of thinking about what the community consists of and needs in terms of community-based innovation. For instance, community-based innovation can be used to describe innovation between individuals connected online, thereby encompassing a range of collaborative and competitive efforts (Seidel et al., 2016). In their early study, Fuller et al. (2007) adopted such a strategy by looking at how online basketball communities contributed to product innovation in, for example basketball shoes. In other contexts, community-based innovation is defined as innovation through the development of new ideas by individuals belonging to a physical (local/regional) sport community. One example of this is Franke and Shah’s (2003) study of innovation in a German sailplaning community and a German handicapped cycling community. They found that both (innovation-related) information and the innovations themselves were shared freely in these sports communities, and that the culture of collaboration and open communication that resulted was an important success factor.

In another study, Hoeber and Hoeber (2012) examined a community sports organization in a middle-sized Canadian city responsible for organizing adult football leagues for 175 teams (2500 players). Their study followed the development and implementation of an Electronic Game Sheet consisting of a set of handheld devices and player ID cards for tracking game-time information and a custom website for reporting scores and statistics. Hoeber and Hoeber (2012) concluded that leadership commitment, organizational capacity and involved and interested external parties were identified as determinants of this community-based technological innovation. Their findings also illustrate the multiple determinants of innovation at the managerial, organizational and environmental levels, some of which span the entire innovation process, while others are only critical at a particular stage (Hoeber & Hoeber, 2012).

Thirdly, community-based innovations can be framed as cases in which sports organizations aim to address various issues in a specific community. One example is Van Tuyckom’s (2021) study of the development of neighbourhood sports in Bruges, Belgium, as a collaborative effort between voluntary sports clubs and community-based youth organizations. Despite such efforts by sporting organizations to aid community projects, Reid (2017) criticizes the application of sport as a lever for social change. This is not because he is against sports organizations doing something for their local surroundings besides sport, but that ‘its individualising, quasi-religious optimistic script of harmonious social change without tension (…) deflects from political causes of local problems and structural changes needed for genuine social impact’ (Nicholls & Cho, 2006, p. 87; Reid, 2017, p. 598). Instead of instigating real change, sports organizations are actors in ‘fairytale narratives’ providing cosmetic solutions to deep problems where the societal forces—as addressed in Chap. 5—are unaccounted for. Although this argument has been forwarded to FIA and Formula E via an external evaluation of the Girls on Track programme, the community-based innovation element of the programme is dependent on the bigger picture.

Notably, Reid’s criticism is based on what he sees as the neoliberal foundation of projects aiming to elevate communities from poverty, exclusion and conflict, where the focus is on individual grit and thus ignores: ‘how the odds are stacked against those at the bottom of the class hierarchy’ (2017, p. 606). What is more, the political circumstances of whether sport can be ‘used’ as a lever to induce social change are crucial to address in any community programme. For instance, unless the history and culture of Bahrain is taken into account, it is difficult to see how sport could or should approach that conflict-ridden society or contribute to change (Næss, 2017). Similarly, in the context of the Black Lives Matter campaign, the relation between sports organizations and athlete activism needs to consider how the political climate reinforces the tension in which the various actors engage (Coombs & Cassilo, 2017). Others include the role of the media, especially social media, which is used by oppositional groups to ‘challenge the public relations practices of host organizers and their media partners. For proponents, these new(er) forms of media provide the conditions of possibility through which the sport event media frame can be disrupted’ (McGillivray, 2017, p. 1893).

From the review above, it would seem that in order to establish truly innovative community-sport collaborations, dimensions of power, class and the media need to be addressed. At the same time, this is more like a continuum than a dichotomy, with the exact location depending on a number of factors. What is more, research on community-based innovation seems to omit the role of popular culture, which, considering other kinds of research, and almost regardless of how ‘popular culture’ is defined, has been emphasized as influential in making social change happen. In Formula E, however, we have to include it.

Popular Culture and Societal Change

After the involuntary break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, in August 2020 Formula E announced its #PositivelyCharged campaign, as part of FIA’s #PurposeDriven initiative, ‘to not only create an extraordinary racing spectacle, but to make a positive impact on the world’.Footnote 2 Among other things, the press release stated that through the campaign Formula E was ‘United against discrimination in any form, by nurturing a culture of inclusivity that celebrates diversity in all its forms. We know this is a race with no finish line, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go faster.’Footnote 3 The message was coordinated with several Formula E publicity stunts and representatives—drivers, team principals and managers—offering their views to the public. For example, British Formula E driver Neel Jani, whose father is of Indian origin, urged the motorsport community to do more to combat racism:

It is a subject which has come up and needs to be looked after and everyone should stay on top of it, although it is clear you can exaggerate everything and go too far on certain things, so it is about finding the balance. But clearly things have to be done.Footnote 4

To convey its own views, the Mercedes Formula E team said on Twitter that it would contest the season’s final six races with an all-black base livery, ‘taking a firm stand against racism and all forms of discrimination while advocating greater diversity’.Footnote 5 Formula E’s announcement was also linked to FIA’s #PurposeDriven initiative and was specified by Formula E’s ‘Positive Futures’ programme, which we will return to below. For sport in particular, this development is tied to the emergence of a ‘sport media complex’ (Rowe, 1999). Boyle and Haynes (2009) claimed that in 2008, ‘sporting issues, inevitably bound up with the media, had never mattered more and appeared to extend into areas of society previously immune to engaging in such a high-profile manner with the business of sport’ (p. 2). The creation of sport ‘heroes’ is one example (Lines, 2001), notably with the use of social media in recent years. Equally important is popular culture’s structural influence on society and its reflection of certain societal aspects. While Gemar (2020) claims that in Canada sport consumption and cultural lifestyles are closely connected, Edwards (2010) reflects on this relation quite differently, by stating that: ‘The deterioration of circumstances in America’s urban centres, reflected so powerfully in popular culture, is having a decidedly negative impact upon the young men and women who are being recruited into sports today from elementary school through the high school ranks’ (p. 69).

In contrast to those who see popular culture as a tool for structuration and argue that it reflects the divisions of society, popular culture can circumvent the conflicts of society by enabling ‘a temporary triumph of process over product’ (Whannel, 1993, p. 348) if the masses agree that sport is a conflict-free zone. In reality, though, and as we will return to below with the case of the Saudi Arabian Formula E race, popular culture is itself a contentious site of struggle. At stake, Whannel continues (1993, p. 348), ‘is the power to define the nature of social reality—in this case the forms that popular sporting pleasures can take’. Whannel (1993), who borrows much of his lingo from Barthes (1973), backs this up by claiming that the true power of popular culture lies in its jouissance, ‘the moment when the spontaneous inspiration of performance escapes, fleetingly, the tendency of capitalist commodity production to transform all such cultural processes into calculated packaged objects for consumption’ (Whannel, 1993, p. 348). Conclusively, whilst others see popular culture as a reflection of societal struggles sportingly manifested in class, race or gender, as addressed above, according to Whannel, sport holds ‘out the possibility of remaining playful, of grasping pleasure and of holding reality at bay’ (Whannel, 1993, p. 341). In what follows, we examine how this situation is exploited by Formula E and how it has utilized popular cultural elements to convey its community engagements.

Above we saw that success with community-based innovation often depends on how sports organizations incorporate societal forces and structures in their empowerment programmes, and how the media is used to convey the need for change or challenge the status quo. We first turn the Formula E’s Positive Futures programme, which is due to be implemented in 2021 and, more specifically, the Formula E Open Talent Call, the aim of which is to find the next generation of young presenters. This competition is open to anyone aged between 18 and 24 years, regardless of background or experience, and first of all consists of a video-based audition. Following this, the top 15 talents will face a review round with Formula E insiders before four finalists are selected. From these four, who will all receive mentorship and training, one winner will be awarded a paid position as a presenter for the first race of the 2020/2021 season. CEO Jamie Reigle said:

We hope the initiative will create an opportunity and benefit us, primarily from an audience perspective, by allowing us to have a different tone of voice and a different approach in the content we produce. Our audience is younger and more likely to care about innovation and climate change so we want to talk to them in a more authentic way as well as create more opportunities and pathways for those looking to get into the industry.Footnote 6

Its first winner, 21-year-old Derin Adetosoye from the UK, who had considerable experience in creating social media content already, later commented that ‘I am so excited to be joining the remarkable Formula E family next season and make my mark as the first black woman presenter for an international motorsports rights holder.’Footnote 7

This is only one example of facilitating open innovation in communities and catering to the YouTube generation, where the combination of personal branding and social media has enabled youngsters to pursue a certain career mode (Chen, 2013). Although Formula E is coordinating the Open Talent Call, it also allows partners ‘to benefit from the results of the innovation process and to exploit them in their own business processes, e.g. in the form of new products, services, new knowledge or through intellectual property right’ (Bergman, Jantonen & Saksa, 2009, p. 140). However, two kinds of open innovation can be said to exist. Formula E’s Open Talent Call can be defined as an outbound open innovation that ‘involves opening up a company’s innovation processes to many kinds of external inputs and contributions’ (Bogers et al., 2018, p. 7). The Call is strategic, because research on the broadcasting of Formula E races has proved that the green element has been downplayed in favour of traditional racing narratives (Robeers, 2019). Inbound open innovation, in contrast, ‘requires organizations to allow unused and underutilized ideas to go outside the organization for others to use in their businesses and business models’ (Bogers et al., 2018, p. 7).

In this latter sense, Formula E has played into the hands of its partners by supporting the liberalization of authoritarian countries without politicizing the process. The reason for this diplomatic approach is the danger of Formula E being used by politicians and investors in an attempt to refine the image of certain countries for economic and cultural reasons. Conceptualized as ‘sport washing’, numerous researchers have explored the ramifications of this trend, notably with Russia and Qatar as cases (Griffin, 2019; Reiche, 2018), but also as a general development in international politics (Kobierecki & Strożek, 2020). As for Formula E, a study in progress by one of the authors shows that while many of the characteristics of sport washing was recognizable in the Saudi Formula E races in 2018 and 2019, there was very little debate about it on Twitter. Rather, most of the debate that took place in motoring publications revealed that Formula E intended to use its presence to engender societal change through popular culture. In relation to the 2018 Formula E event, a TV documentary called Race to Change, produced by American LGI Media, was broadcasted. Bordering on a commercial flic, with reference to the first ever unsegregated concert (featuring famous DJ David Guetta and others), as well as flying in foreign influencers to enhance the country’s image on social media, it also reveals the increased acceptance of women in society by the race organizers. Much attention was also given to Reem Al-Aboud, who in 2018 was only 19 years of age and the youngest woman to drive a Formula E car,Footnote 8 and Reema Juffali, one of three GCC women to hold a race licence and be a driver in the Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY support championship.Footnote 9 The latter was something of a hype, considering the fact that the Saudi state had just granted women eligibility for a driving licence.

However, the critics emphasized the hypocrisy of Formula E’s use of neutrality (as is common among sports organizations), yet at the same time legitimized the sitting regime’s policies by saying that their country deserved a Formula E race. For example, in December 2018, Formula E’s Chief Media Officer, Jerome Hiquet, said in relation to inquiries about the decision to race in Saudi Arabia that: ‘First of all, we are a sports organisation. We are not a political one. So we are not commenting on that. Point two is that we are following the rules. There is nothing from a legal standpoint to say that we should not go there so we are going there.’Footnote 10 Anything that is not illegal is OK, in other words. Almost the same sentiment was shared by Agag when asked about the same matter in a different interview:

Obviously, we are not oblivious to the events that happen in the world, but we do not believe it’s our role to comment on the specific incidents and it is not our role to comment on politics. We think sport and politics should be kept separate. Also, we operate in the legal international framework, and no countries have imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia, so I don’t think we should be more strict than our own governments.Footnote 11

Agag’s remark about governments being lenient with Saudi Arabia points to a necessary clarification of responsibilities. Whereas sports organizations are free to do as they like, as they are not bound by international treaties, conventions or deals on condemning human rights abusers, governments need to step up their efforts if they are going to be in a position to legitimately claim action from, for example Formula E. For instance, in 2016 FIA (albeit in good faith) awarded money to a Syrian motorsport community initiative and later learned that the money was used for propaganda by people associated with the ruling Bashar regime, which also happened to be on the list of people under sanctions by the European Union for their part in the regime’s violent repression of the civilian population (Næss, 2019). Although technically FIA had done nothing wrong, the funding procedures were revamped.

However, it is a long way from small corrections like these to the global boycott of the apartheid regime, a campaign in which FIA was one of the last sporting bodies to join in 1985. Moreover, that an organization calls itself neutral does not free Formula E of all responsibility, as reflected on by Archbishop Desmond Tutu regarding the idea of neutrality: ‘If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality’ (cited from Brown, 1984, p. 19). If Formula E’s core values and its operationalization of them are part of the Positive Futures programme, there is no easy way out for Formula E when it is simultaneously associated with countries with little concern for human rights and the well-being of their people. A combination of responses to this kind of criticism seems to be the chosen option. First, Formula E relies on incremental steps when it comes to changing the conditions for suppressed groups, such as females in Saudi Arabia. Agag again: ‘We want to be part of that change and, yes, it’s a big paradox and maybe even a contradiction that the biggest oil producer has an electric car race, but I think that is also a great symbol of how things are changing.’Footnote 12

Measuring the impact of community initiatives by sports organization is, in general, difficult. Often subsumed under the heading sport-for-development research, Coalter (2013) divides it into ‘sport plus’ initiatives (such as the removal of barriers to sports participation for the general population or particular target groups) and ‘plus sport’ initiatives, where sport is a means to an end (such as using sport to bring large numbers of young people together to achieve the aims of social and health programmes). But there are problems with assessing the connection between thinking about sport as a vehicle for social progress and isolating the effects it may have on the community. A report by Coalter and Taylor (2010), which began with the hypothesis that ‘sport contributes to the personal development and well-being of disadvantaged children and young people and brings wider benefits to the community’ (p. 91), actually decided to abandon the ‘wider benefits’ part due to resource constraints and logistical factors. Similarly, according to Whitley et al. (2020), the methodology used to monitor the impact of sport on development projects is too instrumental and often fails to incorporate the nature of the ramifications of the intervention.

In contrast, it seems as though Formula E relies on conveying the ‘wider benefits’ through the power of popular culture as a way of changing the social and political circumstances of controversial race settings. The Positive Futures programme turns inward to make the sport—and perhaps the holding company—more diverse and less characterized by a reproduction of knowledge regimes known from other studies of organizational change (Lyke, 2017). Formula E’s anti-trafficking policy also goes under most people’s radar, in that it uses popular culture to induce change in a piecemeal way, as elaborated by Whannel (1993). Two final examples of that came first in the form of the documentary, And We Go Green, broadcasted in June 2020. Freely available it was the result of a collaboration between Agag, Hollywood star Leonardo di Caprio (who makes a cameo in the film),Footnote 13 and Academy Award-winning director Fisher Stevens (Tiger King etc.). Rather than digging into the difficulties of changing the world, it puts on a big song and dance, riding the wave where ‘Celebrity environmental activists help to advocate and to create awareness for ES by using their visibility through media presence and their accessibility to widespread audiences’ (Robeers & Van den Bulck, 2019, p. 1). As one reviewer said, it ‘is really a long commercial for Formula E, with a little soap opera among the drivers thrown in and a peek into the tech of the cars’.Footnote 14

As for the prominence of DiCaprio, Robeers and Van Den Bulck (2019) demonstrate that he has been involved in environmental sustainability issues for quite some time. Moreover, his engagement goes beyond using his name to shed light on critical aspects of conventional racing and the automotive industry in general. Besides establishing the Formula E Venturi team in 2012, he also became chairman of the Sustainability Committee of Formula E three years later. Yet, according to the media content analysis by Robeers and Van Den Bulck (2019), this celebritization is all there is to it. Despite getting attention and being applauded for his actions, the novelty of his engagement wanes as time goes by. Hence, Stevens the director, who knew little about racing and nothing about Formula E, had his doubts despite his good relationship with DiCaprio: ‘I was concerned about making a sport about privileged white men, really, in a time like this. That was like literally my first thought. There’s no women. There’s no Black people. There’s no people of color. These are spoiled white guys. Rich guys, most of them.’Footnote 15 Although that impression would improve as Stevens worked himself into the world of electric racing, he—as an environmentalist working on de Caprio’s climate change documentaries in the past—still could not contain his cool when asked whether Formula E drivers got Agag’s message: ‘Not all of them. For sure, no. No way. A lot of them are there just because they need a gig. And then some of them are way into it.’Footnote 16

The final example is the collaboration between the BBC and Formula E initiated in December 2020. By harnessing the co-production and co-innovation tendencies in sport as discussed in Chap. 4, this collaboration differs from usual fan-content uploading sites by inviting fans to share short films with a purpose. On the invitation form it says: We’re looking for people around the world who have a passion for Formula E and are keen to share it. Is that you, or someone you know? How has Formula E accelerated change in a positive way for you or your community?Footnote 17 Further down the form, which users have to fill in, it asks what it is about Formula E that makes ‘you’ passionate about the championship: the purpose (the fight against climate change), the sport (the intense and unpredictable racing action) or the community (its welcoming and inclusive ethos), to mention a few. The aim with this approach is to ‘shine a light on the role Formula E is playing in the global conversation around electric vehicles’, as well as provide data to BBC’s ‘proprietary research methods, involving state-of-the-art facial coding technology’, which ‘will be used to track the audience’s emotional engagement and identify a new community of Formula E fans’.Footnote 18

On the one hand, this exploitation of users’ relation with media is a classic ingredient in popular culture studies due to how media use for many decades has been defined by evolving group identities (van Dijck, 2009). On the other hand, this new targeting of fans as responsible citizens and sport consumers at the same time however comes with some caveats. Studies examining the impact of user-generated content (called UGC) on tourism claim that pro-environmental UGC stimulates pro-environmental behaviour—but only if the tourists are receptive to the sustainability message beforehand (Han et al., 2018). Although some of the stories uploaded by fans will be developed into original short films shown on BBC throughout 2021–2022, the community-based engagement nevertheless risks becoming an interactive illusion (Jönsson & Örnebring, 2011) unless the limits to empowerment through popular culture are addressed and a diversity of opinions are included. Previous studies of UGC related to Formula 1 races reveal that they to a high degree mirror the official broadcasts (Chiu & Leng, 2019). Steering fans into sustainability issues, however, changes the relation. Unlike And We Go Green the Formula E has no control over the production of stories, but there is nothing that indicates that fans have any say in the selection process of the submitted content. Assuming that the selected content will have to be in line with the Formula E’s brand strategy and the BBC’s journalistic standards, the political economy of popular culture, therefore, is equally important as the innovative features when it comes to topical guidance.

Conclusion

What this adds up is that the two types of innovation—inbound and outbound—are connected to such a degree that claiming to support diversity and non-discrimination on the one hand and allowing Formula E races to be held in suppressive societies on the other will impede the innovative capabilities of the organization. That is not to say that Formula E is all about glitz and glamour and no real incentive for societal change. For example, in 2017 Formula E publicized an anti-slavery and human trafficking policy. Three areas are considered particularly risky in this respect: the supply chain, event construction and local promoters, for which an action plan is outlined. The ownership of these actions is moreover delegated to various departments of Formula E, such as HR (policies and contracts), its Legal Department (anti-bribery and corruption training) and the Senior Procurement Manager (ethical employment standards).Footnote 19 However, in terms of community-based innovation, the emphasis is on popular culture as a leverage tool.

In the context of how this chapter began, questions of racism, discrimination and social structures hindering lasting change cannot be solved with the tools of popular culture. Attention and media exposure are requirements for change, but are not sufficiently powerful in their own rights, as change agents are needed to make a structural impact. Boyle and Haynes (2009) refer to the incident in which Formula 1 driver and later multiple world champion Lewis Hamilton was verbally assaulted by racist chants from spectators during a pre-season test of cars in Barcelona in 2008. This led to an expectation from the media that FIA would strongly condemn these actions. Instead, the response was that: ‘The FIA is surprised and disappointed at the abuse directed at Lewis Hamilton. Abuse of this kind is a clear breach of the principles enshrined in the FIA statutes and any repetition will result in serious sanctions.’Footnote 20 To others, like The Guardian sportswriter Richard Williams, this was not sufficient.

you would think that it might have been in the governing body’s own interest to offer him the best possible protection and to inflict the sternest possible punishment on those by whom he is threatened in such a rebarbative manner. But no. (Williams, 2008, cited in Boyle & Haynes, 2009, p. 111)

In contrast to the more low-key response from Hamilton in 2008, his views on the Black Lives Matter campaign and actions in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by an American policeman in 2020 were forceful:

People talk about sport not being a place for politics but ultimately it is a human rights issue and that is something we should be pushing towards. We have a huge, amazing group of people that watch our sport from different backgrounds and cultures and we should be pushing positive messages towards them, especially for equality.Footnote 21

Hamilton said of FIA that: ‘I will continue to work with them but do I believe they fully understand? I don’t know.’Footnote 22 To Formula E, such engagement is important for its future work in community-based innovation, because unlike Hamilton, we believe that FIA and Formula E understand the seriousness of the situation and the potential that lies in actively defining the relation between sport and politics. By facilitating community-based innovation in both inbound and outbound ways, which the championship has done successfully to some degree through popular culture and even celebrity activism, it seems as though the goodwill that Formula E has built up will enable it to take the next step in organizing innovative measures for structural change.