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.
-
Does school-based sports, with a 100-year-old history, have a 50 or even 15 year future in schools and society?
-
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.
Impaired Judgment
September 5, 2017
Twenty-five years ago, we were helping to address the problem of steroids in sports, as well as other performance or appearance enhancing substances. We segued to concern for creatine use and then to caffeine over-use. Today the emerging epidemic is opioids.
As we moved over the years from one drug-related concern to another, we were reminded, and did some reminding, that none of these concerns posed as great a health threat to students as either tobacco or alcohol.
Laws and public opinion have reduced tobacco use across much of daily life in America. It’s universally accepted that both smoking and smokeless tobacco are unhealthy, and smoking is explicitly prohibited in most public and private places where people gather. Smoking is no longer cool; smokers are sent out into the cold.
However, the same cannot be said about alcohol consumption. Public drinking has been accepted in an increasing number of unlikely places, including college sports venues. Never mind that alcohol is a frequent factor in college academic failures, campus damage and even student deaths; alcohol sales are showing up at college stadiums nationwide.
Booze and college football have been closely linked for years – the staple of the tailgating culture. But, college sports’ addiction to more and more money is now bringing booze inside some of the stadiums. About 50 universities are selling beer at games this season.
Some college administrators say their motivation is not money but an effort to match the spectator experience found at professional sporting events. But isn’t that really about money too?
I stopped taking my family to Major League Baseball games after my young son was bathed in a spectator’s beer; and I left a National Football League game early – never to return to another NFL game – after being exposed to too much “spectator experience” over-energized by alcohol.
I prefer the high school setting.