What football can teach innovators?

So are the sports pages the first place you should look for tips on innovation?

Well maybe they should be, if Matthew Syed’s excellent article “Southampton show the worth of looking beyond football’s borders” (September 19th 2016) on how Southampton (football) and Saracens (rugby) are constantly innovating, is anything to go by.

In the article, Syed covers a number of initiatives the clubs have introduced. For Saracens these include bringing in a philosopher to debate with players about issues within and beyond the game with the aim of forging stronger characters and better leaders. He describes the use of Mozart and Mettalica to illustrate different attacking rhythms. For Southampton they included visiting the Yehudi Menuhin Music School to get tips on purposeful practising and their Black Box Room, modelled on the aviation industry, where they constantly analyse data in the way information is analysed from the black boxes in cockpits.

What then are some of the principles underlying these initiatives from which all innovators can learn?

• Firstly and most obviously is the openness to look beyond your own industry and field of knowledge. A willingness to learn from others and not to suffer from NIH (Not-invented-here) syndrome.
• Aligned to this is the benefit of fresh perspectives that outsiders can bring. Their insights can be invaluable making you look at things in different ways.
• More culturally, Syed points to two characteristics he saw at both clubs. There first of these was an unhappiness with the status quo which was expressed by Alex Sanderson, the attacking coach at Saracens as, “We are never comfortable with where we are”.
• The second is what Syed calls, “bracing curiosity” – the drive and passion to learn and experiment with new things
• The final principles are that these initiatives are not one-off, nor are they derailed if one of them doesn’t work. These clubs are committed to innovation and committed to it, long-term.

It is good however to have success and as Syed points out Saracens are holders of the Premiership title and the European Champions Club and the academy at Southampton have helped develop Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw.