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In view of the evolution of its meaning, the sacredness of which it is currently the object and its omnipresence in the field of sport, we need to clarify what is meant by innovation.

Indeed, a notion that has become unavoidable is not yet clear. Still rather obscure, often confused with invention, creativity or change, the term innovation covers different realities depending on who uses it, and therefore remains rather vague (Mootoosamy 2016). It is in fact a “catchword” that is a source of ambiguity (Garcia and Calantone 2002), on the one hand because it has been the subject of multiple definitions (depending in particular on the scientific disciplines (Boly 2004)), but also because it is strongly imbued with values.

This situation refers to a classic difficulty in the social sciences: the concepts used circulate for the most part in everyday language, often in a vague manner and according to a variety of meanings (Bajoit 2003; Passeron 2006). A classic trap is to consider the categories of common sense sufficiently “meaningful” not to bother with costly terminological precautions (Duchastel and Laberge 1999).

In this opening section, we will try to avoid the frequent confusion between invention and innovation. In light of the above, it would be futile to seek a generic definition of innovation. However, all of the work in the social and management sciences incorporates a fundamental distinction made by Schumpeter nearly a century ago: invention – the inaugural discovery of a new thing – should never be confused with innovation – a process of a fundamentally social nature (Alter 2000). If the former refers to an idea, initial concept or prototype, the latter is conceived as the progressive socialization of this discovery. In a way, the condition for innovation is that the initial idea be “adopted, at least by and in a social milieu” (Gaglio 2011, p. 4). This may involve bringing the invention to market, but this step cannot be considered sufficient to make it an innovation: many commercialized products and services hardly find any takers (Teece 2010). The success of an innovation is indeed linked to its appropriation by consumers or end-users. Beyond this common denominator, the understanding of the process leading from invention to innovation (for example, the conditions of emergence or expansion), as well as the types of actors considered to play a role in it, clearly vary according to theoretical and disciplinary approaches. It should also be noted that there is an ambiguity in the term innovation, which designates both a thing and a state (a novelty that has succeeded) and a process (the actions and trajectory of diffusion of a novelty).

It is also necessary to distinguish between different degrees or regimes of innovation. To do this, we shall use the concept of dominant design (Abernathy and Utterback 1978; Garel and Rosier 2008)². It is a standard, a set of characteristics and properties of products that are accepted, recognized at a given time and common to all market players. A dominant design implies that we know how to identify, design, manufacture, promote, distribute and use a product or a service. A product is then easily and quickly recognized for what it is, within the framework of a dominant design. It is a stable architecture that enables functions to be fulfilled and users to be satisfied, with a certain level of performance around which competition shall be organized, but also an ecosystem and an established business model (with its technologies, regulations, market, commercial relations, value creation system, etc.). Disruptive innovation involves a change in dominant design. This emergence is rare, systemic, and it is a long process. It rarely emanates from established companies, which have little interest in upsetting markets that have consolidated their competitive position, in destabilizing customers who are mainly looking for marginal improvements, and are more or less captive to the network that has been set up within their sector (Christensen 1997). There is also a widespread fear that already marketed products will be “cannibalized” in this way (Leitner 2017).

In short, change is more difficult the more advantages the situation presents, and the more doubts there are about the viability of a nascent market. Moreover, small companies (including iconic start-ups) or those from other sectors are usually the ones that trigger disruptions. Conversely, supporting (or incremental) innovation is part of an established dominant design. It improves it at the margin, renovates it without fundamentally altering it, and develops while remaining within the constraints of the pathway (Vergne and Durand 2010) that frames it, or even locks it in. One can nevertheless seek to make things smaller, lighter, cheaper, faster, less fragile, while remaining within the framework of the established dominant design and its main performance criteria. It is therefore quite rational for dominant companies in a market to opt for these supporting innovations (Christensen 1997).

As mentioned above, the evolution of practices initially constituted the main part of the research carried out on innovation in the field of sport. Subsequently, analyses focused on product innovations against the backdrop of accelerated technological change. Other types of innovations exist and have also been studied: organizational (Hillairet 2003), service (Paget et al. 2010), process (Desbordes 2001), practice (Rech et al. 2009), territory (Nordin and Svenson 2007), social (Tjønndal 2016, 2017; Coignet 2013) or event-related (Bessy 2013). What these studies have in common is that they focus on cases of proven success, which implies a tendency to produce “seamless narratives of success stories” (Gaglio 2011, p. 3). Little research analyzes failures or unfulfilled innovation trajectories. However, talking about innovation also necessarily means taking an interest in the latter, which in fact constitute the majority of situations and are rich in lessons learned. This is why, in this book, we will focus on both successes and failures, which we prefer to describe as unfinished innovation trajectories or processes.

1 1 This dynamism refers to what Gaglio (2011, p. 107) calls an intensive regime of innovation: “the transition, albeit incomplete, from an economy of scale to an economy of innovation, where product differentiation, shorter product lifetimes and a variety of product lines are becoming the norm.”

2 2 To learn more about the elements related to disruptive and supportive innovations and dominant design, we would recommend the MOOC La fabrique de l’innovation, coordinated by Gilles Garel and Loïc Petitgirard, both university lecturers and researchers at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM).