Introduction
The first component of Rogers’ Diffusion model is the innovation, but what is an innovation and what does it mean to be innovative? The innovation is SoccerNet, and as will be shown, it is not enough to describe it as an online social network for grassroots football. A more apt description would describe SoccerNet as a sporting community to promote the values of football.
Nonetheless, the Football Association has several existing mechanisms to promote its rules and regulations, generally focussed on media campaigns. The problem is to improve their adoption by the grassroots community. SoccerNet, therefore, is new approach to promoting their adoption in using a combination of behavioural science and technology to promote the positive behaviours expected by the grassroots community of football. This short analysis of innovation and innovativeness seeks to understand how to promote adoption of SoccerNet, thereby better promoting the FA’s rules and regulations than existing measures.
Understanding Innovation
Innovation is a slippery concept to understand as its interpretation seems to rely on subjectivity. For the Austrian economist, Schumpeter, an entrepreneur employs ‘creative destruction’ using five different types of innovation: new products, new methods of production, new sources of supply, the exploitation of new markets and new ways to organise business’ (p116). This wide interpretation shows how innovation is more than just products, it is also new ways of doing business. Rogers has a similar interpretation additionally suggesting how an innovation could also be composed entirely of information such as political philosophy, religious ideas, news events and public policy (p13). In each of these examples, success is realised when people adopt the innovation which in turn brings about change.
For Rogers identifies five attributes which determine the rate of adoption: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability (see p15-16). Relative advantage is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes. The relative advantage of SoccerNet superficially is to provide a better means to organise football leagues, and more deeply to provide a safer footballing community to be part of. Compatibility is the degree to which the innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing values, past experiences and needs of potential adopters. As an online social network, SoccerNet seeks to be compatible by simply formalising how leagues are presently organised with a new set of tools. Complexity is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. In formalising how leagues are presently organised, SoccerNet will use tools familiar across all popular social networks. Trialability is the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. Observability is the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. Both trailability and observability will be better understood as SoccerNet is developed. To summarise these attributes, adoption is achieved when an innovation improves the lived experience of an adopter with a new way of doing things.
For Rogers, it matters little whether an innovation is objectively new, it is perceptions of newness that determines a person’s reaction to it, ‘if an idea seems new to an individual, it is an innovation’ (p12). Rogers’ insight is perhaps what leads to marketing messages of questionable claims of newness to promote adoption. The business ethnographer and author Simon Sinek provides necessary caution against such an approach. In his bestselling book, Start with Why, Sinek describes this approach as a manipulation, which only yields short-term success. Instead, he advocates a more authentic approach by focussing on the outcome of innovation, in his words, ‘real innovation changes the course of industries or even society’ (see p25-28). Manipulating perceptions of newness is short-termism, whereas focussing on objective change provides for long-term success.
Illustrating this importance of change and innovation is Peter Thiel in his book ‘Zero to One’. Peter Thiel is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs. He gained prominence as a co-founder of Paypal in the late-1990s and was later the first investor in Facebook. As a venture capitalist, he has since backed many other successful social networks such as Linkedin and Airbnb. Theil starts ‘Zero to One’ with the comment,
This point set the book’s premise, which is that going from ‘zero to n’ is simply to copy other people, whereas going from ‘zero to one’ is to innovate successfully. Each example in the above quote exemplifies new and often copied products which brought about global change. Compared to the more complicated MS-DOS operating system, Windows’ graphical user interface simplified how people interact with computers and helped to achieve Microsoft’s original dream to have ‘a computer on every desk and in every home’. In fulfilling Google’s mission to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ its search engine transformed how people interacted with information. And in making the world ‘more open and connected’ Facebook changed how communities interact in ways that transcend both space and time. In each case, the innovation was more than a type as noted by Schumpeter; it also embodied an ambitious idea embedded within the technology.
Start with Why
Illustrating the importance of the idea is Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’ in which he uses case studies to understand how leaders bring about remarkable change through innovation. Sinek compares the successes of the Wright brothers, Steves Jobs and Wozniak and Dr Martin Luther King to understand how they inspired action. His analysis is based on the golden circle, which encapsulates the ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ of an innovation. A ‘what’ is the product, service or function of an innovation. ‘How’ is often given to explain how something is different or better. For Sinek, these entrepreneurs’ success was motivated by and embodied in a higher ideal: their ‘why’.
In the race to take the first manned and powered flight, Sinek observes how the Wright brothers were ‘deeply and genuinely concerned about the physical problem they were trying to solve’ (p97). They had little resource and raised funds from sales in a bike shop. Also in the race was Samuel Pierpont Langley who, in comparison, had tremendous resources from government grants, scientific research and popular support, yet was unsuccessful. Explaining this failure, Sinek observes that Langley’s ‘why’ was to acquire prestige evidenced by his decision to quit aviation following the Wright brothers’ success. Langley simply did not seem motivated by the problem of aviation. Nonetheless, the Wright brothers’ ‘why’ inspired a small and dedicated team who were the first to take flight on 17th December 1903. From their small team emerged the aeroplane since adopted by many industries becoming a significant driver of globalisation.
In discussing Jobs’ and Wozniak’s success with Apple, Sinek makes an important distinction between ‘why’ and ‘what’. He comments, ‘people do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it, and Apple says and does only the things they believe’ (p165). Apple is well known for transforming many industries, and in doing so Apple’s products are subordinate to the idea their technology embodies. Their ‘why’ is synonymous with a corporate culture of innovation to disrupt the status quo, they just happen to do this with computers. Everything Apple does is tangible proof of this idea, and people adopt its products to affirm their own beliefs through association. As Sinek observes, ‘its advertising and communications, their products, partnerships, packaging, their store design, they are the ‘what’ to Apple’s ‘why’’ (p155).
It is perhaps worth dwelling on Sinek’s observation with some insight regarding Apple’s culture when they released the iPod in 2001. The first insight is from a comparison of Apple and Sony from the paper which the Schumpeter quote is taken. The authors start by observing how innovation can appear in any company, not just one with all the pre-requisites to be successful. They make this point by comparing the corporate cultures of Apple and Sony around the time Apple successfully released the iPod. They find that the Sony had all the prerequisites to release an iPod since they manufactured 80% of its technical components and had invented its predecessor, the Walkman. Nonetheless, the authors attribute Apple’s success to ‘collaborative innovation’ in which teams were ‘able to benefit from knowledge residing in different parts of the company through an excellent leadership, while Sony was not’ (p123). Compared to more established firms, collaborative innovation is a new way of working to bring about change.
The second insight is from Sinek who compares Apple’s messaging of the iPod to that of a similar product released by Creative Industries. Creative had first mover advantage since they released their portable mp3 player 22 months before Apple released the iPod. Creative marketed the product, however, as a ‘5Gb mp3 player’, which for Sinek is a much less compelling message than Apple’s who marketed the iPod as ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ (p44). While both products provide the same outcome, Apple’s messaging focused what would objectively change by owning the iPod, thereby promoting its adoption over Creative’s version. These insights on collaborative innovation and novel messaging demonstrate how Apple’s culture of innovation people seek to associate with goes far beyond the products.
For Sinek, Dr Martin Luther King’s historic ‘I Have A Dream’ speech exemplifies why people choose to adopt an idea. Sinek notes the ‘how’ of some groups was violence while others tried appeasement, nonetheless, they were all motivated by the common cause of social justice. In the summer of 1963, around 250,000 people of all races showed up in Washington for Dr King’s talk. In a time when communications and transport were still developing, this was an extraordinary achievement. Interestingly, Sinek suggests their motivation was not to listen to Dr King, rather, ‘they showed up for themselves…they wanted to live in a country that reflected their own values and beliefs…and being in Washington was simply one of the things they did to prove what they believed’ (p129). Moreover, in comparing ‘why’ and ‘how’, Sinek amusingly wonders if as many would have made a similar effort for an ‘I Have a Plan’ speech. Dr King’s innovation was in articulating an idea that motivated civil rights movements and became a rallying cry to bring about positive change. As social animals, people seem more likely to adopt an innovation when it is motivated by a higher and noble cause.
Conclusion
This analysis provides an understanding of how to promote adoption of SoccerNet among the grassroots footballing community. The higher ideal of SoccerNet is to create promote the rules and regulations of football in the grassroots community. With the higher ideal being the ‘why’, an online social network being the ‘what’, the use of behavioural science is the ‘how’. At a deeper level than just a social network, the innovativeness of SoccerNet is in using a combination of behavioural science and social networks to promote this higher ideal. Before the science, however, there is much to be learned from Apple’s long-term success in how its culture embodies a higher ideal in everything it does. Just as people seek to identify with Apple’s corporate culture, so too must they seek to be associated with that of the Football Association. SoccerNet’s long-term success, therefore, will be found in the extent to which the Football Association embodies its rules and regulations in everything else it does.
As innovations, both online social networks and the FA’s rules and regulations are well established. SoccerNet’s benefit is for people to have a new way to organise and engage with the leagues they are part of with a simple to use set of tools. Rogers’ five attributes serve as design principles for developing a social network to de-risk rejection. SoccerNet also provides a new digital channel for the Football Association’s messaging around its rules and regulations. With a higher ideal embodied in SoccerNet, to enjoy the benefit, they must also adopt the rules and regulations. The change SoccerNet seeks to create is to create a safer, more enjoyable community to be associated with through increased adoption of those rules and regulations. More than a social network, SoccerNet is a community for people proud to be footballers.