“The art of innovation is to anticipate what consumers can’t articulate yet”
Back in the days, common football player’s opinion was that a boot mainly needed to protect you from the opponents’ tackles and the impact of kicking the ball. Adi Dassler was said to be an inventor and a lateral thinker more than anything else. He observed that a footballer was only in contact with the ball for maybe 90 seconds of the 90 minutes; the rest of the time he was running, so Adi Dassler reasoned that a footballer needed footwear as light as possible instead of heavy, clumsy leather boots. Apparently Adi Dassler didn’t care much about conventions. He had his own ideas and followed them, no matter what others said. When I recently read about this little anecdote in our history book I immediately thought that you can still feel Adi Dassler’s visionary and creative spirit here at adidas. But what makes an idea a successful innovation? What is our framework for innovation? My curiosity was piqued and I decided to ask Bernd Wahler, adidas Head of Innovation, for an interview. Here’s what I learned…
