Like in American football, teamwork and innovation go hand in hand. Just like advancing on the football field requires the team working together, bringing ideas to market requires an innovation team. Just as football teams aim to score touchdowns, innovators strive to successfully introduce their ideas to the market. Innovation and collaboration are important in executing ideas and avoiding the risk of losting opportunities to competitors. Building a strong innovation team helps support the execution process and celebrate successful outcomes.
To explain how a current innovation team works, the best association I have found is that of American football. The popularity of this sport grew as it became the dominant version in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. And even more in universities, as is the case today with innovation.
As an American football fan, I find the strategy and team approach that manages American football very apt when explaining an innovative team.
In American football, they play on a long field. In the game of innovation, this area you can call the market. In the same way, there is a ball; for this example, the ball will be your idea, invention, or product, and if the idea or ball reaches the market is called a touchdown or goal. It doesn't matter if it is a beautiful short, long goal, or auto goal; it is an innovation when the idea effectively comes to the market!
Each play is thought and analyzed in seconds and detail by different actors; there are very few things that are left to chance, although luck decisively intervenes on many occasions.
In the American football game, the team with the ball has four play attempts to advance at least 10 yards; it will be four more plays to advance another 10 yards and thus reach the area of the goal and score a touchdown. This is the equivalent of your idea reaching the market.
If, on the contrary, it does not advance, the team without the ball recovers control of it. And it is now them that begin to attack from that point. In a football game, attackers lose many balls to the rival team; the same is true of innovation. Unless the idea is effectively moving to market, the advantage will get lost - the competition takes control.
How many times have you lost your ideas and seen that someone else ended up intercepting them or taking them to the market because you were ineffective at doing so?
You always think “I had that idea first!” But the innovator was the one who first brought the ball to the goal line - the idea to the market - no matter who the first owner is! That is why you will see your competition attempt many times to bring your ideas to the market themselves.
So if the objective of American football consists of scoring points for every idea or ball you achieve, in the game of innovation things are the same! Your mission will be to bring each ball or idea to the goal area or market, and you will celebrate every time you effectively score, therefore your goals will be innovations. And this is only possible when you have a great team helping you along the process!
