Approach

The ethos of the entire Swedish Winter Sports Research Centre (SWSRC) is based on striving to produce and deliver; it is simple to discuss, analyse or conduct a brainstorming session to find new ideas and solutions, and flexibility is of central importance. Unlike other centres at the university, as SWSRC is a research centre its activities do not need to take teaching into account when planning schedules or selecting projects.

The availability of elite athletes and close links with the Swedish Olympic Committee mean that SWSRC has unique opportunities to conduct, apply and test innovative ideas using people who are professional users of the products or technologies: lead users. This provides extra weight to the research and development work conducted at SWSRC. One of SWSRC’s strengths is using the unique input it receives from a range of sources. These include coaches, athletes or technicians who have requests, opinions and ideas for potential studies and sporting products. This information is invaluable, because it comes from the “field” in which knowledge and materials are used and tested by lead users in the international elite. The various issues and ideas are then discussed with SWSRC and developed into concrete research questions and projects. It is important to have forward momentum in development work: SWSRC achieves this by using different people to contribute to different areas, so work can be well distributed and efficient.

Innovations process

This flow of ideas, knowledge, experience and requests to SWSRC also creates opportunities to first develop a concept and then to subject it to testing and research. This approach – development, research, optimisation – contributes to our sizeable production of academic articles and products. Its advantage is that it provides opportunities for putting thoughts and ideas into practice. For smaller projects with a lead time of no more than a month, known as easy cases, it is beneficial to produce prototypes rapidly and then study the results and effects. This creates a push-effect on research, instead of research having a pull-effect on development. However, it is also important to emphasise that this approach is not based on trial and error, which is usually comparably more expensive and requires more time.