One year ago, the world was watching as adidas revealed a new global innovation: Boost. This running shoe with its revolutionary sole promised to change the running industry forever – a bold claim indeed, given that innovation is never an end in itself.
An innovation can only become relevant and useful if it manages to generate enthusiasm amongst people. But this often takes time; time for the target group to get to grips with the new development, recognise its value and accept it.
So one year after Boost was first introduced, we find ourselves asking this question: has the innovation found its way into runners’ hearts?
Innovation has always been an essential element at adidas, the engine that has driven the company through all these decades. But no matter how strongly developers believe in an invention, it is no guarantee that the product will be a success.
Take, for example, the adidas_1. It was the most technologically advanced shoe in 2005, one of the first to feature an integrated computer. Nobody can doubt that this was an innovative idea; however, the shoe failed to capture the hearts of the running community. Even after more time had passed, runners were still not convinced. It could not raise their enthusiasm.Sometimes, the road to success is not always straight when it comes to innovations.
The creators of Boost really believed in the quality of their innovation, even more so thank back in the adidas_1 days. Boost had already won over the developers long before it had even taken on the shape of a running shoe. To begin with, the new innovation consisted purely of a couple of small blown-up capsules of TPU resembling – at first glance – Tic Tacs. Senior Innovation Director Gerd Manz was one of the first to be caught under the spell of this innovation.