Creating Innovative Sporting Cultures: Enabling an Innovation Enterprise

Abstract

This chapter highlights the relationship between change and innovation, with a particular emphasis on why a sport enterprise must recalibrate its cultural expectations and norms in order to accommodate a lasting innovative culture. It further explains how sport enterprises can approach innovation in a practical sense. That is, how to cultivate new ideas, develop them into proof of concept prototypes, and subsequently scale these experimental products into commercially viable offerings. The chapter also deals with how innovation can be embedded and integrated within a sport enterprise. It outlines how rituals offer a unique and effective vehicle for cultural modification. Rituals revolve around key organisational functions, instil commitment and belonging, depict successful behaviours, and deliver acknowledgement and attention to those who excel at them. Several team approaches are recommended for tackling pivotal organisational values through rituals and their accompanying narratives, symbols, assumptions, and beliefs. Finally, the chapter provides some guidance on how cultural innovation can be measured. This chapter concludes that many sport enterprises struggle to not only make innovation a living part of their cultures, but to even successfully enable a single, discrete innovative initiative. Sustainable innovation cannot be enforced through directive strategy, procedural compliance, or charismatic leadership. It requires a cultural readjustment of the kind that some might find counterintuitive because innovation thrives in environments that operate as close to chaos as they do to order. Ironically, sport enterprises find this precursor to innovation just as demanding as those from other sectors, despite the fact that their core product resides firmly in that ambiguous, turbulent, and dynamic territory.

Case Study: Creating an Innovative Culture at the English Football Association’s St George’s Park

Despite possessing the most lucrative domestic football league in the world, England has not managed to convert this success into national squad performance. Yet, off the competition grid, the team leads the way in its innovative state of the art development and training complex, St George’s Park.

In 2014, a new philosophy was launched at England’s national training base, St George’s Park in Burton, called ‘England DNA’. This philosophy focused on England’s youth teams from U15s through to Men’s Under-21s, and Women’s Under-23s. England DNA became the starting point of the Football Association’s approach to elite player development, aiming to produce future winning national teams. The years following the opening of St George’s Park and the implementation of the new philosophy have seen a new era of football for England Youth Teams. The innovative culture that has arisen from the investment has seen England youth development changing, and so far with proven results. In 2017, England won the U20 World Cup in South Korea, undefeated. Meanwhile, the U21 team made it to the semi-finals only to lose in penalties to Germany, but its U19 team won the European Championship and the U17 team defeated Spain to win the World Cup (only having qualified for the event three times since it began in 1985).

Matt Crocker is the Head of Development Team Coaching, joining from Southampton where he oversaw the academy and the likes of Theo Walcott, Luke Shaw, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Crocker’s role focuses on a long-term vision of success, beginning with the youth team and filtering into the senior national squad. While England’s reputation at recent World Cups could leave fans sceptical about the recent philosophy and investment, the four-year plan has shown results that are not only exciting young players and fans of the sport, but also suggesting that the strategic planning at St George’s Park will pay off.

The culture of the senior England team has been scrutinised for many years by media and followers of the game, yet with a new philosophy and a fresh investment into the training and development of the national squad, there was the opportunity to create an innovative culture from the outset. Part of the strategic planning that went into St George’s Park involved setting a clear vision for all to follow. Leaders like Crocker set measurable targets to achieve, and put clear development pathways in place for youth players to progress through. One of the biggest challenges in creating an innovative culture lies with creating consistency between off the pitch and on the pitch performance. An elite, innovative environment spans further than the system and style of play; it involves recruiting the right talent, hiring world-leading experts, and setting systems in place to develop the right players. Part of this challenge means collaborating with clubs to gain buy in and support to achieve harmonisation across age groups from U15 to the senior level.

An innovative culture has been created at St George’s Park by looking at every element of a player’s development and setting a game plan that aligns with the new philosophy. The innovative culture nurtures the talent emerging in England with young players thriving with the extra training hours, more time on the ball at a young age, and an Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) that has brought about sustained success with measurable KPIs, such as players winning Player of the Tournament awards, Golden Glove Awards, and Golden Ball MVP Awards. Yet it remains to be seen if the philosophy will translate into a successful senior team. After all, an innovative culture can offer the environment for development, but it does not dictate the opportunities for players to receive first team game time with their club, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the financial success of the Premier League .