This post has gotten the most attention and traffic, I have updated it slightly and reposted.
In 2008, the revered and often fabled government space agency NASA was recruited by a highly successful brand of sporting goods to test drag reduction on the companies products. The purpose of the testing was to determine drag reduction on a piece of equipment that would be widely used in the sport, primarily cloth or textile based. The resulting product would give the Olympic athletes in that sport significant advantage for early adoption. The engineers at NASA were given very specific parameters to test the material based on the companies inherent knowledge of the product. The data produced would be generated using all of the processes that NASA had been using for many of its testing protocols for the various traditional applications, rockets and planes. NASA's testing platforms and standards would be implemented. The data and resulting recommendations would clearly would be highly credible and likely lead to the production of an innovative product.
After extensive testing of various materials, the data and its resulting product was patented in Spain, and under the new Madrid protocol for worldwide Patent enforcement, became an exclusive product as far as the patent law would allow.
As a result the athletes that adopted the product early won nearly all of the events at the years summer games in Athens, in many cases establishing unprecedented margins of victory and in the process setting numerous world records. The international sporting authority in question, did not have a rule in place that prohibited the use of the new items, and significantly did not have a blanket rule to prevent the use of something not approved previously. As a result the Americans adopted it widely and quickly (it is not sailboat racing, even though I purposely connected the phenomenon from the sport). Micheal Phelps won 8 gold medals in the sport the product was used in, and broke numerous records doing so. The Speedo LZR suit reduced drag by 1.8-2.2%. NASA quickly discovered that they could run water drag reduction simulations using a wind tunnel on the 60 or so provided fabrics by speeding up the tunnel about 15 times to produce exactly the same drag as water. A similar water test would have been extremely time consuming and expensive. The test was done very quickly, and a suit was produced with similar expedition.
The athletes in question saved 2% of energy expenditure, providing the smallest of spurts required for end of the race kicks. Nearly all of the athletes ended up with the suit at the Olympics. Athletes discovered wearing two suits added to the buoyancy. A single female athlete was singled out and reprimanded for its usage despite not having a rule for it. Since the adoption of the suit, the rules have been much more clearly defined by the international Swimming governing body.
The case has many parallels to the sport of sailing. Sailing rewards innovation in cases where rules don't limit it. Dennis Conner remains the only person to have won the Star World Championships by having won every single race in the series. The Star class is a box rule, not a one design, and does allow for development of equipment in certain parameters. The feat of winning every single race at the supremely competitive Star Class World Championships has never been repeated, and it never will be, if you ask Dennis himself. Dennis had used a new fabric in the sails that produced a significant speed advantage, it was within the rules and he apologetically destroyed the world class fleet.
In the World Series of Sailing, the 1983 America's Cup, team leader and sailings lone Sports Illustrated Cover man Dennis Conner, was both victim to and then benefactor of innovation. Australia II's winged keel took away what had long been, the longest known winning streak in terms of time span in the history of human sporting events and thus in one fell swoop, created a intense culture of competitive innovation in the sport of sailing. When Dennis Conner returned to Australia in 1987 to win it back, he implemented a rigorous two boat testing program in the condition specific location of Hawaii.
Conner also formed a partnership with company, 3M. 3M, a company whose internal company Mantra is "Failure is a good thing" and has long rewarded its employees to to generate 25% of its revenue from new products every year, delivered a drag reduction product, called Riblets. Conner used this on 1987 Star & Stripes to win the Cup back, and in the process, win a ticker tape parade down Madison avenue in New York.
Would Micheal Phelps and Dennis Conner have won the events without innovation?
One Design classes have to pay attention to innovation and make sure it does price out, or open the door to a massive discrepancies in performance.
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