I have NFL games on the TV while writing this.

I notice that most post-game interviews with players and coaches are filled with meaningless fluff.

Recycled answers of “We have to play harder” or “I have to do better and that starts with me.”

Teams that stink have coaches saying “Well, we have to take a hard look at everything.”

What’s funny is that even after the hard look, the teams still stink!

Coincidentally, I find many interviews with CEO’s and other executives are filled with the same, useless fluff.

Plenty of corporate word salad answers to questions. Don’t forget the repeated use of inane words like “headwinds” or “pivot” and the forever useless “new normal.”

But, I read through an interview over at Footwear News with Adidas CEO, Bjorn Gulden. Although it was from earlier this year, there was something related to innovation at Adidas that caught my eye.

When referring to a “state of the company” address to the company in May 2024, Gulden had this to say:

“People said things like ‘there is no innovation’; ‘there are no hot products and there is no brand heat’; ‘there’s no talent.’ It was a difficult start, but I will show you that we do have innovation that existed 12 months ago that had nothing to do with me and was already there.”

He also made these comments in the FN interview:

“At Adidas, for whatever reason, people stopped making decisions. If we have a good shoe, we need to launch it. We had Samba, but didn’t scale it. We had the Evo, the most innovative running shoe in the industry, but we didn’t launch it because we were testing.”

Hmm, that sounds familiar.

I know I have seen something like this before.

In Peter Drucker’s 1985 book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship.”

Drucker describes a scenario at a chemical company where one of its central divisions had to produce new materials. Apparently, all the plans for the materials existed and all the necessary R&D was done. But, no materials were being released to the market.

The GM of the division eventually revealed that their compensation was tied to return on investment. If the division spent money on new materials and released them into market, the ROI would decline for a period of time….apparently, for 4 years.

So, the compensation plan was changed accordingly. 18 months later, new materials were on the market. Four years later, overall profits doubled.

Now you tell me: What were the incentives like at Adidas to push new lines of product into market before Gulden showed up? How much did Adidas lose out on while innovative products were sitting in the shadows?

It is very common for companies to be overly protective of existing business. Thus, they avoid taking the risk of putting new ones into the market.

For Adidas, it seems as though Gulden has a good handle on things since taking over. Samba’s and Gazelle’s are boosting sales for the time being. And, there is opportunity to grow while Nike takes the time it needs to reset.

A big part of success will mean continuing to take risks and pushing new items to the forefront, rather than keeping them hidden.

Now, back to the slate of football for the rest of the afternoon.

…although, I’ll skip the post-game fluff.