Inspiring suppliers to innovate basketball

First we had to understand our audience. We’re talking about hundreds of companies from around the globe, coming together for a virtual innovation event. Many companies are also competitors from one another. That means they would not be as open as we’d like to share thoughts and innovative ideas. So we were challenged to keep our audience engaged with very few interactions – just a few live polls during our talk.

We started off with a high-energy video on sports innovation trends that we’ve created to shake up our audience. Only then we started the actual presentation. In our slides we could have just summed up and illustrated the many innovation opportunities for basketballs, flooring, hoops, fan engagement, training wearables … But that would become boring fast. Bye bye innovation appetite.

To keep our diverse audience engaged we told the story of a fictional character named Emma. Using design thinking and storytelling techniques, we follow her from a very young age, through her entire basketball career until she retires from playing and adopts supporting and management roles. In all chapters of her life she approaches the game differently, with new user needs and desires. Each chapter allowed us to talk about different value propositions and innovation areas to consider. This format proved to be extremely engaging and empowering to our audience.