5 things that innovation leaders can learn from the Olympics

There is a lot that innovation leaders can learn about passion, speed, efficiency and boldness from Olympic athletes. However, I think there is even more that you can take from how the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the individual Games themselves, are run and delivered.

Here are 5 aspects that really stand out to me:

1. Invest in new ideas like the Olympics invest in new sports

For innovation leaders, it can sometimes be difficult to decide on which idea to invest in next. Often you are bombarded with statistics around a new idea’s ROI, timescale to deliver, resource costs and much more. The Olympics have a similar challenge when it comes to introducing new sports into the Games.

The things that the 90 IOC countries consider when they choose a new sport to be featured in the Olympics aren’t hugely surprising. They look at things like the popularity of the sport, media interest in the sport, income potential, how the value of newly introduced sports align to the values of the games, venue costs, sponsorship opportunities etc. etc.

With all of that to consider, how on earth do they decide? The IOC use their values and strategy as the deciding factor. Their focus on increasing gender inclusivity and introducing more “youth” sports is fundamentally what has led to new, urban sports such as skateboarding, surfing, karate and sport climbing included in the Toyko 2020 games.

You can learn from the Olympics here and keep it simple. Choosing to invest in the new idea that best aligns to your company strategy and direction can provide larger returns but critically, similar to the surfing in the Olympics, may also open up access to an entirely new customer base that will re-shape your future.

2. Learn to balance risk

Introducing new, emerging sports carries a significant level of risk for the IOC. Compared to the big-money traditional sports, the revenue generated by new additions to the schedule are minimal. To balance out that risk, the Olympics relies on its 25 core, well known Olympic sports to generate the money that they need from ticket sales, sponsorship deals and media communications. Essentially, they spread their risk to ensure financial stability.

The same goes for an innovation portfolio. Within any organisation, you should ensure that you take a balanced, risk-based approach with investment into a smaller number of high risk (Horizon 3) ideas and a larger number of low risk (Horizon 1) ideas. Very few organisations do this well, and that’s partly because it can be difficult to get the full picture with innovation happening in silos across different business lines. By tracking and managing your portfolio, there is huge potential to take greater financial risks in the knowledge you have some safe, stable ideas to fall back on.

3. Be truly open to open innovation

Whilst open innovation isn’t a new concept, we still see clients struggling with striking the right balance between keeping open innovation really broad and centering it around a quite specific problem. Admitting a problem to the public as part of an open innovation brief can be a vulnerable place for a company — but used correctly it can generate fantastic results.

We saw a great example of this at the first Open Innovation challenge that the Olympic Games ran in February 2020. What was particularly powerful was that the whole challenge was centred around a clear problem: the scoring and viewing of the new urban sports can be complicated — how might we make them more experiential, accessible, fun and easier for fans to understand?

With such a pointed problem statement they generated solutions using 5G and AR that were highly impactful and allowed technology partners taking part to really hit the mark. I would encourage you as an innovation leader to be equally pointed and truly open in your own innovation challenges too.

4. Generate a buzz through branding

When I think back to the Olympics that have taken place in my lifetime, I can still clearly see the logos from each of the individual Games in my head. Each Games has a really clear brand identity (some better than others — I still wonder how we couldn’t come up with anything better for London 2012…!) that creates a huge amount of excitement and energy in each host city.

When we run internal or external innovation challenges, we want to invoke similar feelings of anticipation and pride in solving a problem and the opportunities that lie ahead. Using a clear brand identity for an innovation challenge can be a great way to do this.

At Pollen8 each of the innovation challenges we run have their own brand, visuals, campaign and purpose. These things make the innovation challenge feel real, important and instantly recognisable. Strong branding helps to make an innovation challenge feel like a priority — rather than a suggestion box that no one will ever look at.

5. Don’t be scared to decentralise

It’s not uncommon for companies to have innovation efforts taking place across multiple geographies and business areas. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Decentralised innovation efforts can enable results to happen faster. Employees often relate better to their own business area and are therefore more likely to engage in innovation activities. The balance between centralised and decentralised innovation is difficult to strike but we can learn from the Olympics here, too.

Each time a Games takes place, an Olympic Games Organising Committee (OCOG) from that host city is created. Ultimately they are accountable for organising that Games and are trusted by the IOC to do so. However, they must follow the IOC standards and regulations around, for example, medical provisions and fairness in sport. By including IOC country representatives on each host city organising committee it ensures that overarching standards are being withheld, yet still enables autonomy for the local geographies to run the games in their own way.

Similarly, a central innovation team can help to set common goals and standards, identify reuse opportunities, provide support with launching new ventures and manage the overall innovation portfolio. This means that you can avoid duplication of effort & investment, whilst ensuring that business leaders have the autonomy to innovate quickly and effectively. It makes what would otherwise be siloed innovation more manageable and coordinated.

Innovation can be a complicated landscape — but done correctly can create the same feelings of pride, elation and passion as the Olympics. As innovation leaders, you can learn from these incredible games and keep it simple. Keep aligning new ideas to strategy, track and manage innovation across the organisation in a portfolio and ensure that you keep taking chances with open innovation. In doing so you’ll become the elite athletes of innovation in no time!

If you want to find out how we can help you to innovate like a champion, get in touch today!