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A non-traditional approach to organisational innovation
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sportanddev.org recently co-organised a workshop with Dr Per Svensson from Louisiana State University entitled “Organisational Innovation in Sport for Development and Peace” at the 2017 European Association for Sport Management (EASM) conference in Bern.

 Dr Svensson shares his thoughts on the key takeaways.

sportanddev: How would you summarise the main outcomes of this workshop?

Per Svensson: We had both practitioners and researchers come together to talk about the importance of organisational innovation and the nature of innovation in sport and development.

The main outcome of this workshop was the identification of the many different ways that organisations can be innovative. The workshop has created a foundation for future meetings and initiatives focused on how to better enable organisations to develop creative new ways for achieving sustainable outcomes. We also discussed how practitioners and researchers can better work together to figure out ways to advance sport and development.

sportanddev: One of the topics of discussion explored how practitioners in the SDP sector define innovation—can you expand on this?

PS: Innovation has certainly been studied in business and other areas, but it’s important to consider the unique context of sport and development. It is important to consider how practitioners themselves view innovation rather than apply an existing definition from another field.

Findings from the research presented in the workshop highlighted that innovation in SDP includes a diverse range of creative approaches and solutions to existing problems. Broadly speaking, practitioners consider the willingness for taking risks to better achieve intended development goals and contribute to more meaningful social change to be a central aspect of innovation.

SDP organisations can be innovative in terms of their programmes and products (new or improved ways for achieving more meaningful impact), the ways in which sports and programme practices are adapted to local contexts, the management, internal processes, or structural design of the organisation (e.g., creative financial sustainability solutions and inclusive decision-making processes), through collaborations with non-traditional partners and sectors (e.g., microfinance and SDP) and through socially transformative advocacy (e.g., increasing awareness and changing public perceptions on a social issue).

sportanddev: Technology was also a central theme—how does technology contribute to sport and development? 

PS: We broke out in smaller groups with practitioners and researchers, and there were some really creative ideas generated from these sessions. Discussions highlighted important questions to consider in terms of the role of technology in SDP. For example: Are we considering the role of virtual reality for training volunteers and staff members? Are we using technology to create new platforms? How do we bridge [the gap between] people that are in so many different locations? What role may technology serve in addressing these issues?

There were some really interesting idea-storming sessions around the potential role of technology. These discussions went beyond the potential importance of technology and resulted in constructive conversations about the potential of technology to enhance SDP through online learning communities, regional networks, and matching of organisations for more meaningful partnerships in SDP.

sportanddev: How can sport and development stakeholders and policymakers work together toward achieving the sustainable development goals?

PS: There needs to be a change in mind-set in how we look at each other within sport for development, and also a bigger emphasis on looking outward, beyond sport for development. How do we fit into existing or broader development efforts? How do we fit into existing or future policymaking efforts? Those two things together can really help sport for development’s field better contribute to the SGDs, yet will require practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to develop a better understanding of organisational innovation.

sportanddev: One of the goals of the event was to bring practitioners and academics together. How successfully did the event do this and what can sport and development more generally do to bridge that gap in future?

PS: We took a non-traditional approach in how we organised the event—it was very interactive. Presenters (including a mix of researchers and practitioners) had to present their work using the PechaKucha format, so they had a set timeframe (20 images x 20 seconds per image) to narrow down their ideas into a select few key takeaways. They were only allowed to have visual overviews or images. This effectively required presenters to tell a story about their work to the audience in terms of what they learned and how their work contributed to our understanding of organisational innovation in SDP.

I think [the format] was very successful in getting not just practitioners to present, but I think it’s also really important if we’re truly going to come up with better ways to enable sport to contribute to the development and peacebuilding goals. 

We need to do a better job of working together and sharing ideas in ways that are more engaging and easier to understand. There were some great presentations on the idea of improved or increased participatory research and working together as researchers and practitioners rather than ‘them’ and ‘us’.

It was really exciting as the first meeting in terms of talking about the idea of organisational innovation, and we received such great output. I hope the report of what we talked about will be a good start for future meetings, whether at future conferences like this or more practitioner-oriented conferences on how sport and development organisations can be more innovative.

  • A summary of the workshop is available here