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Innovation Obstacles
April 12, 2013
It doesn’t take long to compile a dozen or more examples of products or businesses that have disappeared, or nearly so, because the world changed while the product or business did not.
Think eight-track tapes and players. Consider what digital photography has done, from the Eastman Kodak Company to out-of-business local studios. What the Internet has done to travel agents. See what’s happened and still happening to print newspapers across the country, to magazines, and to both local and large chain bookstores.
It is not at all rare that businesses fail to reinvent themselves. For many reasons, including admirable passion for what they are doing, business leaders often miss the trends or ignore the signs that suggest the need to change their products or their entire business model.
As Geoff Colvin wrote in FORTUNE magazine Feb. 25, 2013, “Business model innovation is a competency that doesn’t exist in most companies.” He continued: “The largest obstacles will be weak imaginations, threatened interests, and culture.”
I suspect that those are also the three major obstacles we must overcome as we think about the future of interscholastic athletics.
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Does school-based sports, with a 100-year-old history, have a 50 or even 15 year future in schools and society?
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If so, should the business model change? And if so, how?
I suspect that some of what we think is change may be no better than rotating bald tires on our car; when what we really need is new tires, or no tires at all.
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Push Pause
May 2, 2017
For the past 15 months, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has focused more of its precious resources of time and money on these four priorities:
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Define and Defend Educational Athletics
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Promote Participant Health and Safety
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Serve and Support Junior High/Middle School Programs
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Recruit and Retain Contest Officials
These topics were brought into focus by making time for the MHSAA staff and Representative Council to pause from the frenetic pace of everyday duties to talk about constituents’ current needs and to think about the next big things that are just down the road and perhaps around a metaphorical corner.
It is time to ignore the tyranny of the urgent, push “pause,” and engage the MHSAA staff and Representative Council once again in a time of research into and reflection about the current and near-future needs and wants of the constituents they serve. This discussion could lead anywhere, but these topics will get things started:
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What’s next for kids that could/should involve us – e.g., Robotics? E-Games? Water Polo? Girls Field Hockey? Boys Volleyball? Girls Flag Football? Road Racing? Snowboarding? Weightlifting?
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What’s our role with respect to special programming for students with cognitive or physical disabilities?
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If given a windfall, how would we best spend $50,000? $250,000? $500,000?