Читать книгу Innovation in Sport. Innovation Trajectories and Process Optimization онлайн

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Above all, it is important to avoid focusing on providential entrepreneurs, on the one hand because the exceptional figure of the enlightened entrepreneur can be criticized as a chimera (Mustar 1994), but also, as we shall see, because it obscures many other actors and factors. This perspective is not self-evident, since we have been used to seeing innovation as essentially the work of avant-garde individuals capable of recombining productive systems. A recent history (Schutt 2012) of the manufacturer Petzl (technical outdoor sports equipment) describes the founder (Fernand Petzl) and especially his son (Paul Petzl) as visionary, determined and driven by a desire to innovate and capable of anticipating new needs and practices in order to reconfigure outdoor markets. While the career paths and sociological or personal characteristics of innovators must certainly be taken into account in innovation trajectories, they cannot be an exclusive explanatory factor for the fate of new products.