In 2017, innovation is crowd sourced.
With the proliferation of technology, rising knowledge and demands of consumers and increasing levels of competitions across various industries it only makes sense for industry leaders to overturn every stone in seeking innovative ideas. Often times that means turning the reigns over to the people.
The sports industry is no different, which is why the Sports & Fitness Industry Association has announced it will host a Start-Up Challenge at its annual Industry Leaders Summit for the second straight year.
The first version of the competition, won by the sponsorship tracking platform Hookit, was a huge success, according to SFIA president and CEO Tom Cove.
“We were very happy with the way it rolled out,” Cove said. “We got very interesting presentations. We got a pretty wide range of inputs, products, companies and people from all over the world.”
Like the 2016 competition, the second annual event will take place at the organizations biggest yearly event – the Industry Leaders Summit. This year’s summit will be held Sept. 13-14 in Chicago.
While the start-up competition will not conclude for almost nine months, SFIA is looking to get a jump on the 2017 event in order to improve on the inaugural competition.
While Hookit was the clear winner in 2016, Cove said, most of the entries were also digitally based companies. Those types of entries are still welcome, but SFIA is hoping to generate interests from start-up companies with more tactile offerings.
“We believe we’re going to get bigger and we’re going to be broader,” Cove said. “We think one way to make this interesting to our industry and more interesting to the overall public is to have more actual products – things you can touch and see.
“We want to focus on the products that can actually contribute to presentation rather than an actual digital activity. For us that’s a big thing. We think we are going to get significantly broader kinds of things.”
Still, Cove encouraged those who were not among the five finalists in the 2016 competition to once again enter the contest. Any company fitting the rather loose definition of a start-up – “relatively small and relatively new” with a go-to-market strategy – is welcome to apply.
Winning the contest can be a game changer. Hookit CEO Scott Tilton said that winning the 2016 Start-Up Challenge last September offered the company “major validation” in addition to the explicit prize of a free six week PR campaign and one free year of SFIA membership.
“What it really did was provide a great platform for emerging companies to get on the radar for the industry,” Tilton said, going out of his way to thank the SFIA for their efforts. “It really gave us great exposure in a confined community that we were targeting.”
That community included luminaries in the sports and fitness world. The 2016 panel of judges included C-level executives from Mizuno, New Balance, Under Armour, Life Fitness and more. While the 2017 list of judges has not been finalized, many are expected to judge for a second time next September.
“They’re very significant leaders in the sport and fitness industry,” Cove said. “It encourages the professionalism of the whole process.
“Getting in front of these judges is a damn good deal.”
A good deal and one Tilton urges potential start-ups to take advantage of.
The Hookit CEO said that a big reason his presentation was so well received was the research he did on the judges in advance, allowing him to target his presentation with relevant examples for the represented companies.
Regardless of whether a start-up lends itself to that kind of presentation, though, Tilton recommends the SFIA competition.
“There is no reason why you shouldn’t do it,” he said. “When you’re in start-up mode you need every opportunity you can get.”
Clearly, the Sports & Fitness Industry Foundation understands that too. And while crowd sourcing is certainly not the only source of innovation, it’s long been proven a valuable one for a variety of businesses.
“There is a lot of demand, a lot of interest for innovation in our industry,” Cove said. “Most of our folks are really open and interested in creating new companies.”
