Episode 2: Innovate Like Team GB with Dr Scott Drawer (Team GB, Team Sky & Millfield)

Over the last 20 years, Scott has led human performance departments across some of the most elite sports organisations in the world.

He was Head of Research and Innovation for Team GB over 5 Olympic cycles, led England Rugby’s Player Development Pathway, headed up Team Sky’s Performance Hub with the job title ‘Imagineer’ in the Tour De France & now, as Director of Sport at Millfield, is building a team responsible for inspiring a generation at the leading sports school in the country.

Over the last two decades, Scott’s roles in research and innovation required him to look outside the traditional confines of sport. And much like this podcast, involved him bringing together some of the greatest thinkers across sport, science, business and the arts to discover new breakthroughs and explore human potential from different perspectives.

He holds a PhD in Sport Science, has published 36 research papers, but most importantly, he manages to maintain the same child-like curiosity and energy for innovation and unlocking talent as he did 20 years ago.

In today’s episode we discuss innovation and it’s precursors; curiosity and creativity.

Scott explains his journey, the startup-like atmosphere when he joined Team Sky and what he attributes his high level of curiosity.

We talk about how in the infinite game of business, where you can’t win or lose but simply get ahead or fall behind, the goal is actually to out-innovate the competition.

And Scott explains the 2-3 most crucial components for companies and teams to achieve this.

You can expect to understand;

- The essential components for innovation

- How to do it better than your competition

- How to reframe risk for next-level innovation

- The inner-workings of British Cycling’s famous ‘secret-squirrel club’

As always, if you enjoyed this episode please like, rate, subscribe, leave a review and share it with others.

Thanks for listening and enjoy.

(0:00) Podcast intro

(0:50) Guest intro

(3:01) Scott’s journey

(6:03) What led Scott down this path?

(9:17) The risk-curiosity relationship

(10:59) Depth vs diversity of experience

(12:16) British Cycling’s ‘secret squirrel club’

(13:50) Scott Barry Kauffman’s research on creativity (video = ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCzr7RCBigA⁠) (paper = ⁠https://scottbarrykaufman.com///wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Oleynick-et-al.-2017.pdf⁠)

(14:39) Build a diverse toolbox

(15:57) Conducting an orchestra

(17:07) Mid-episode summary

(17:38) Startup mentality

(18:49) Sweet-spot alignment

(19:25) The importance of constraints

(20:12) The only sustainable competitive advantage

(20:41) The Red Queen Effect

(21:20) How to measure innovation?

(23:38) The resources-innovation paradox

(25:40) 3 measures of an individual’s innovation potential

(27:49) 3 measures of an organisation’s innovation potential

(30:41) 2 biggest learnings from 5 Olympics

(35:49) Episode takeaways

(38:03) 3 action points (screenshot)

(38:58) Coming up next