It’s a copycat world in elite sport. The basics are relatively easy to roll out and easy to copy. You have to do the basics of all aspects of athlete preparation to win at the highest level. However, a few times in my career, I have experienced that feeling of being relatively with happy with how the team is being prepared and supported and have found myself asking “Players are doing everything we are asking them to do. Our preparation is really good. So, now what? How do we continually strive for a competitive advantage?”
The key at this point is to ask “what is holding our team’s performance back?”. This quite often involves taking on a huge technology project or completely changing the way we do something. The key is to take on these projects when the basics are already up a running. Projects that cause major breakthroughs are typically long-term and often fail before they are successful. But when all things are equal in the high performance world, they can make the difference and should not be discounted as unnecessary or a luxury.
A few things to consider:
1. They are usually expensive
2. The key is to choose the right tech project to have the biggest impact
3. The investors need to be prepared for initial failure. 4, The first prototype of anything doesn’t work that well. 5. Test the technology at a major event before you roll it out. Build confidence in the technology amongst the athletes.
6. Never let the cat out of the bag. Set it up so only 2 or 3 people know what the specific Innovation is. This prevents gossip and potential copying by opponents. 7. Don‘t reinvent the wheel. If the technology already exists. Just buy it. Don’t invent a slightly better version of something that you can buy. It’s a waste of time for minimal return. Focus on big impact ideas.
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