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

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Innovation stories tend to be idealized in a fairly classic pattern, which unfolds as follows: a bright or avant-garde idea carried by a figurehead; a rapid succession of steps allowing for smooth development; a positive outcome sometimes carrying the seeds of a “real transformation”. This is hardly surprising when attention is focused on successes and, moreover, when these are reported (notably to journalists) by companies and their spokespersons (Vinsel 2017). To succumb to this form of storytelling is more surprising for some researchers, who are supposed to show more distance but who ultimately follow this type of description, which contributes to shaping and maintaining a virtuous and linear vision of innovation, far from what more rigorous analyses reveal.

For anyone who intends to tell the story of innovation, the question of access to information is central. However, one of the limits of success stories is linked to the quality of the informants: through the voices of their executives and R&D managers, companies engage in communication exercises that promote their image, their mastery and their know-how in innovation. When the descriptions are backed up by diversified sources, the depth of the information gathered almost systematically leads to a departure from the usual narratives and the tenacious myths of the visionary innovator (Callon 1994) and of linearity (Joly 2019). Surprising pathways are revealed: the emergence of the concept and the origin of the invention become blurred; the sources of innovation are multiple; hesitations and forks in the road, starting from and around the initial project, are frequent; time is stretched out, and booms follow periods of inertia; control over the spread of the innovation is partial; and so on. These “surprises”, which reflect the complexity of innovation processes, in fact point to an invariant: trajectories are rarely linear, and the control exercised over innovative projects is relative.