Mapping Innovation in Sport: Revealing the Innovation Opportunity

Abstract

This chapter establishes the sport innovation landscape by distinguishing where innovation can occur in the sport industry, and how these sites intersect with a cultural context. The chapter addresses how a sport enterprise can go about mapping its culture with innovation in mind. The first section of the chapter maps the potential sites within the sport industry where innovation can occur. Next, the chapter explores the innovation–culture link through a ‘cultural innovation horizons’ framework. Horizons expose the kind of cultural support that different forms of innovation require in order to be successful and sustainable. Finally, the chapter suggests ways for sport leaders to map their organisations’ cultures with innovation in mind. The chapter concludes that culture can be a repository for unimaginative and conservative values or a foundry for inspiration and enterprise. In sport, it is no longer satisfactory to just cultivate cultures that speak to strength and resilience. Such admirable qualities must be bound together with agility and ingenuity. Innovative cultures drive performance, leverage powerful histories, and change swiftly in turbulent conditions. Sports enterprises with innovative cultures find ways of winning because drive and ambition lies at the heart of their collective meaning.

Case Study: Mapping Innovation in Sport—Bayern Munich

European football giant FC Bayern Munich have been a dominant force on the pitch for decades, but more recently they have established a reputation for being one of the most innovative soccer clubs in the world with their off-pitch activities. For example, the club developed and hosted what they call ‘Hackdays’, involving ‘experts from different disciplines working together in teams on technical, business or design problems with the goal of developing innovative and creative software to build prototypes and generate new ideas’.

Hackdays are FC Bayern’s method for solving problems using open innovation, in this case through contributions made by the wider business and technical communities. The mission is to think of fan experiences and services in new ways, such as by testing new technologies around the stadium , and by enhancing fans’ emotional connections with the club through digital technology and social media. These innovative Hackdays have proven to be an effective way to find innovative solutions that the internal experts within the club may not have developed without the input from outside specialists. By practicing open innovation, a new level of learning is unleashed in an environment where technologies are rapidly advancing and clubs are under pressure to maintain a competitive advantage both on and off the field.

The challenges tackled by Hackdays often involve how to mobilise the remarkable potential of new technologies to personalise fan experiences , such as augmented and virtual reality simulations, data analytics, and global social media. During Hackdays, the club creates an environment for participants where innovative thinking can be stimulated and explored including ‘lightning talks’ and customised forums where specialist experts offer direct guidance to the innovators.

In 2018, the challenges undertaken by the club included: (1) augmented and virtual reality solutions for advanced fan engagement; (2) the Adidas Challenge for Mobile Interaction to engage Generation Z with the club through mobile engagement; (3) the Audi Challenge, which seeks to find better ways of allowing fans to interact with the club while in their cars; (4) the SAP Challenge in order to work on fan integration and activation in order to personalise the fan experience; (5) the Siemens Challenge to seek out the best transportation experiences for fans; (6) the DHL Challenge, which aims to improve fan engagement through gamification solutions; and (7) the FC Bayern Challenge, to create technological solutions that tap into fans’ emotional experiences and enhance their engagement with the club.

Hackdays are organised around competing teams, where the winners are awarded a trip to one of FC Bayern’s Champions League Away matches. The club also collaborates with Columbia University (NY), Tongji University (Shanghai), and Tsinghua University (Beijing) in order to secure participants from around the world with a diverse range of skills and technical knowledge. In addition to the potential to win a trip and see their solution implemented, some participants have gained notoriety through their contributions. For example, the club generated considerable interest in the media when it named the participants of the Audi Cup via a holographic press conference in 2017. The world’s first such stunt brought Liverpool FC Coach Jurgen Klopp and Atlético Madrid’s Diego Simeone to Munich via hologram.

The club’s strategy is to drive innovation by utilising the technologies at their disposal through their commercial partnerships. In 2017, the club partnered with Tenor, the leading Gif sharing platform as a way to open up new streams of fan engagement. In addition to bolstering fan experience , FC Bayern have developed their security technologies by partnering with Siemens. Clearly, FC Bayern’s innovation investment has been paying off with fans subscribing to app downloads and associated products in unprecedented numbers. Indeed, in a global world, the club has a global strategy. In 2014, it opened a US base of operations, which has resulted in a doubling of the club’s digital audience.