Introduction
Sport has changed dramatically in the past decade as a result of technological innovations. The internet and the resulting mobile commerce revolution changed the way sport is viewed, purchased and played (Ratten 2011). This has led to some interesting ethical debates about how technology has changed performance outcomes in sport. The need for technological change in sport has been the result of not only more competition among different sports for fans but also an increased usage of technology in people’s everyday lives. This has led to the practice of sport becoming more complex and harder to manage. As Misener and Misener (2017: 125) states, “sport organizations are also facing constantly changing funding regimes, increasing pressures to compete, and an increasingly globalised multifarious marketplace”. Thus, sport organizations have multiple stakeholders they need to consider from the players, to coaches, fans and the community who all use technology in a different way. The perception of technology innovation in sport is related to who the stakeholder is and the reasons for the technology usage in sport (Ratten 2012). Some stakeholders such as businesses develop the technology while also using the technology in different ways. Other stakeholders such as athletes are more interested in how technology can increase their competitiveness.
Technology innovation is central to a sport organization’s ability to gain a competitive advantage particularly when timing is of the essence. Sport organizations are aware of the possibilities that technology innovation brings to the global environment but are sometimes unsure how best to use technology (Chelladurai 2009). The reason for this uncertainty is due to the way technology is included in sociocultural activities (Ratten 2010). Thus, a way to describe the innovation capabilities of organizations is socio-technical system theory (Ngo and O’Cass 2013). This theory suggests that technology needs to be reviewed from a societal perspective in terms of how people use technology (Ratten 2013). To discover the nature of socio-technical systems in sport I define technological innovation as “the employment of a product with enhanced performance appearances to provide new or developed services and positively affect the customer’s experiences” (Faroudi et al. 2016: 4884). While there are some negative factors to technology innovation, this definition I adopt in the book focuses more on the positive ways the sport industry is progressing and responding to competitive pressures through technology innovation.
There are close scholar practitioner links with sport technology and innovation, which have resulted from the use of technology in sport having tangible outcomes for practice and theory. I use the terms “sport technology innovation” and “technology innovation in sport” interchangeably in the book to address innovations that rely on technology in the sports sector. In this growing field of study, sports technology has an impact and relevance that surpasses other subdisciplines of sport management. However, there are opportunities for the integration of theories from related disciplines including economics, engineering and medicine to build a distinct sport technology innovation discipline. This is due to there being room for additional theoretical advancements in the sport technology field that applies research from other disciplines. Sport technology scholars and professionals need to think about the great potential of this field in increasing a positive discourse about the use of new science. Educating people about the positive and negative effects of technology innovation in sport will further support its development (Ratten 2016). Table 1.1 states the barriers and reasons for sport technology innovation. The barriers include the costs of developing the technology, being too expensive, and the planning time in terms of product development being complex. This means that it can be difficult sometimes to obtain usage of a technology when there are intellectual property considerations to take into account. In addition, some technologies need to be regulated and approved, which means there is a delay in implementing the technology. Finding the right people who have knowledge about the technology can also be a hard process (Wu et al. 2015). This means it is important to evaluate properly the potential benefits of the technology.
Table 1.1
Barriers and reasons for sport technology innovation
Barriers | Reasons |
|---|---|
Costs too expensive Planning process takes too long to implement Complex procedure to obtain usage of the innovation Lengthy time to acquire technology Cultural resistance to implementing the innovation Problems linked to finding the right people to implement the innovation Hard to evaluate the potential benefit of the innovation | Potential future usages of the innovation Market leader and competitiveness reasons Ability to acquire the technology Quality of the technology Managerial competences Economic gain Social position Enlarge firms’ competencies Encourage further innovation and creativity |
The reasons for a sport technology innovation are numerous and are often in conjunction with other trends occurring in the marketplace. Some technology innovations are platform technologies and used for a number of other reasons (Diez-Vial and Fernandez-Olmos 2014). This means to be competitive in the global economy it is important to acquire the technology. The quality of the technology will differ depending on its design and the economic gain associated with its usage (Laurell and Sandström 2018). This means that firms often have to enlarge their competencies to take into account further innovation and creativity resulting from the technology innovation (Ratten 2015).
Most research on sports technology innovation has an interdisciplinary perspective as it combines different concepts and theories from a range of disciplines that have a blurred boundary. An example of this is technology innovation in sport utilizing techniques from both the technology management and innovation science disciplines. This enables a combined method approach to be adopted that enables a deeper understanding of sport technology innovation. Multidisciplinary perspectives are evident in the mixture of disciplines that underpin research on technology in a sport context (Ratten 2017). Often a non-integrative approach is needed in sport to grasp the needed features of different disciplines particularly when medicine is used in conjunction with technology (De Bosscher et al. 2006). Transdisciplinary approaches pursue a more utopian view of research in unifying knowledge beyond disciplines (Balague et al. 2017). This means that core principles that are cross-disciplinary are incorporated into sport technology innovation research. An example is sport technology integrating medical, technology and innovation research into a new invention. Traditional sport science research has been interdisciplinary and this is evident in the different approaches used to study it. Sport science involves “a large number of disciplines, including (but not limited to) anatomy, biochemistry, biomechanics, performance analysis, physiology, psychology, sociology, sports medicine and health, as well as coaching, talent identification, anthropology, sport management and other interdisciplinary perspectives” (Balague et al. 2017: 51). There has been a tendency to take a silo approach to sport research by applying it from a specific discipline perspective such as engineering or management. However, this is starting to change with the realization that research conducted in one discipline can have value when used in other disciplines. This is particularly evident in sport with it becoming a big industry affecting other sectors of the economy. Thus, sport science combines a number of disciplinary perspectives from interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary (Balague et al. 2017). Interdisciplinary means applying sport technology across a number of subject areas such as medicine and psychology whereas multidisciplinary involves embedding different approaches to the development of theoretical frameworks. Transdisciplinary is not referred to as often but involves a number of different disciplines being used at the same time, which is useful in sport technology innovation research due to the emergence of new innovations occurring at a high rate.
Balague et al. (2017) suggest using different disciplines such as biochemistry, biomechanics, psychology, physiology and sociology to understand how they interact with each other depending on timescales and context. From an external perspective, the interlinkages between each sport discipline are logical but often researchers in each field stay in a silo and are reluctant to use theories from other fields (Gibson 1998). In order to understand sports technology innovation it is important that interdisciplinary knowledge is exchanged and transferred. To do this more communication and awareness of the inherent interdisciplinary nature of sports technology innovation is required. This can be complex due to the different scientific languages used in sport science (Hristovski 2013). Medicine has its own terminology and so does engineering, which can make it hard to communicate scientific findings.
Technology innovation has been a subject of intense interest in recent years due to its effect on other industry segments. There has been increasing usages of technology that has changed the way business is conducted particularly those using electronic or mobile commerce applications. From athletes to spectators there is a broad range of sport technology innovations that have influenced how sport is perceived in society. This is reflected in the nature of sport having changed due to shifts in technology such as the increased usage of online social media platforms and electronic payment systems (Gard and Dionigi 2016).
Sport organizations are increasingly faced with challenges from technological innovations. This requires new ways of incorporating technology to relate more to the cultural and social environment. Sport organizations are evolving to keep up to date with technology innovation that challenges current thinking (Miloch et al. 2012). More sport organizations in the future will need to become agents of change in facilitating the development of new technology. This will enable the sport industry to survive by incorporating technology needed in the global marketplace (Parent et al. 2017). To thrive in the increasingly interconnected global business environment, sport organizations need to consider technology as an evolutionary way to keep up to date with change (Shilbury et al. 2016). This requires sport organizations to be visionary about the role of technology innovation and how they can facilitate development (Jones et al. 2017). Increasingly the discourse about technology innovation has been discussed from a sports perspective (Konig 1995). This is due to the role sport has in promoting cultural and social change (Houlihan et al. 2009). The sport industry can benefit from acting in a more innovative way by engaging with new technology. This will help sport increase its competitiveness by embracing the complexity of technological innovations.
Sport technology innovation is viewed broadly in this book as improvements to sport-related activities using mostly information and communications technology. The goal of most sport technology innovation is to increase the value of a product, service or process by providing better p...