Clayton Christensen: Hi, this is Clay Christensen, and I want to welcome you to a podcast series we call The Disruptive Voice. In this podcast, we explore the theories that are featured in our course here at HBS, building and sustaining a successful enterprise. In each episode, we'll talk to alumni of our course, and others who are trying to put these theories to use in their lives and in their organizations. It's great fun to hear from them, and I hope that you find these conversations inspiring and useful. If you have an idea about a topic or a speaker that you'd like to hear more about, or if you'd like to comment on our work, please reach out to us here at the school.

Shaye Roseman: Hello and welcome back to The Disruptive Voice. I'm Shaye Roseman, a researcher at the forum and your host for this episode. Today we're taking the podcast off campus and into downtown Boston, where I'm sitting at the headquarters of the Sports Innovation Lab, a market research and advisory firm focused on helping the sports industry define its future through technology, intelligence, investment, and partnerships.

Shaye Roseman: I'm here to talk with the lab's co-founder and CEO, Angela Ruggiero. She's a 2014 alumni of HBS and of our BSSC course, but even for that group, she's an overachiever. A four time Olympic medalist and part of the US women's ice hockey team, Angela was named best player in the world by the hockey news in 2003, and was inducted into the hockey hall of fame in 2015. She was the longest tenured Olympic hockey team member of any gender, and is the all time leader in games played for team USA, male or female. She retired from the sport in 2011, and until earlier this year was a member of the executive board of the International Olympic Committee and the board of directors of the US Olympic Committee. Angela, thanks again for joining us. To start, can you explain what the Sports Innovation Lab is?

Angela Ruggiero: Sure. The Sports Innovation Lab is a market research company exclusively focused on the sports technology industry, so we're creating data and intelligence around the business of sports, specifically around the technologies that are disrupting, anything from what the athletes are doing on the field all the way into what the business of sports is doing to evolve because of the disruptive technologies that are hitting the market today. So we're trying to empower global leaders in the sports sector to better understand technology as it's proliferating the industry like every other industry.

Shaye Roseman: And you've personally been involved in the sports industry in a number of different ways and a number of different roles. I'm curious why you felt the need for a place like the Sports Innovation Lab to exist, and what you're trying to help your clients achieve.

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, so my background... Obviously, I was an athlete. I competed in four Olympics, saw technology changing the way that I competed, how I trained. When I went on to serve on the International Olympic Committee, I was on the executive board there, part of the board of the Olympic channel, the largest investment the OIC has ever made, which was around a over the top platform, ensuring you could watch sports 24 hours a day, the Olympic sports.

Angela Ruggiero: I've sat on a number of roles on the administrative side. And really I think the catalyst for me starting the Sports Innovation Lab was, I was the chief strategy officer of the Los Angeles Olympic bid. So we're trying to get the games back to LA, and we did that successfully. But as part of that, we were trying to convince the world what the most innovative Olympics would look like. And as we went into the market, we realized that there really wasn't anyone out there that could tell us, and no one's going to be able to predict the future, but there were no firms that existed, no companies that existed that really had a firm grasp on the tech that was changing sports.

Angela Ruggiero: So when I met my business partner, Josh Walker, he came from Forrester research. So if you're familiar with Forrester, Gartner, providing that type of service for the sports industry, but built on technology, built on a software platform which we believed would derive insights that no number of analysts or people could possibly do.

Angela Ruggiero: So I saw a need in the market to say, look, as tech is hitting sports, like every other industry, we don't have a Gartner, we don't have a Forrester, we don't have a Bloomberg, we don't have anything that's going to enable leaders to make better decisions around tech. I would love to solve that problem. So I set out to create Sports Innovation Lab, and again, do it in a very scalable way that would allow anyone globally to have access to the data and market intelligence that we are creating.

Angela Ruggiero: So we're working with companies like Google and Intel and IBM and the National Basketball Association and Canadian Olympic Committee, very different groups, but at their core they're trying to understand tech, the market that they sit in relative to their competitors, and just make better decisions, whether they're a tech company trying to get into sports, use their capability, and move that into sports when they don't really understand the sports market. Or they're the sports industry trying to adopt tech, and really don't have a firm grasp on the differences and tradeoffs that they'd be making relative to the supply of that market.

Shaye Roseman: You talked about witnessing firsthand the way that technology was transforming your experience in the way that you trained as an athlete. Can you talk about what that looked like or some of the ways that you saw that happening?

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, so before the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, we had just started wearing heart rate technology, and I was able through the data of those technologies, understand my peak, understand who I should be partners with, who had a similar heart rate, how quickly could I recover, how quickly could my D partner recover? How could I train more efficiently? So all these technologies are allowing me to see my data, to see... Well, if my body is my business, so to speak, if my body is what will enable me to perform, rather than have intuition or gut say, all right, I'm tired. You could look down, see the data and say, all right, Angela's average recovery time is X, Y, and Z. So the data was really a window into what every athlete is looking to understand, how do I perform better?

Angela Ruggiero: And we've mapped at the Sports Innovation Lab over 700 companies in that space alone. So it just shows you the proliferation of companies that are hitting the market that want to help you perform better. And really what they're trying to do is extend that technology into healthcare. If you can provide LeBron James with capabilities and better understand, then there's no reason you can't take that same technology and allow human population, health care population a better way for them to measure human performance.

Angela Ruggiero: So that was on the field, but really why I started the company was off the field. I saw how media was being disrupted, right? The traditional, we're going to sell you a very expensive broadcast linear package. Okay, now you can watch sports on your phone, you can watch it on these streaming platforms, you can create content on your own. Fans are now the best creators of content. So there's all these ways that we saw technology changing the experience of the fan, ways that we were seeing the venue itself evolve into what we call a smart venue.

Angela Ruggiero: And again, smart venue will extend into a smart city. If you can prove out a technology in a venue, you can prove that out and demonstrate how you're going to help traffic flow, how you were going to help safety. So sports is this really interesting testing ground and platform for technology companies. So again, we're seeing a proliferation there and I just go, Oh my God, as the market is moving so quickly and no one's really there to keep their finger on the pulse, the job to be done was hire someone to tell me what's happening in this market, so that I can make better decisions and ultimately stay ahead of the game.

Shaye Roseman: It sounds like you describe sports and athletics as a testing ground for some of these new technologies, and you are yourself part of the Sports Innovation Lab, but sounds like the aperture and the ambition for some of these companies and technologies that you're looking at may in fact be much larger?

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, and that's why we love the industry. I mean, I obviously love sports. It changed my life. I want sports industry to be successful. But I also recognize the power that the industry has, why people buy the brand and the logos and associate with the leagues. It's they want to tell a larger story. And as we're seeing more and more technology companies move into sports, sponsor sports, help shape the experience itself in the venue or at home. They're doing it in part because they want that market, but they're also doing it in part because they want to talk about what's possible. So think of an IBM Watson as an example. You can talk about Watson through the lens of a B2B solution. But if you said, "Our technology improved fan engagement and powered the US Open," now you have a very tangible example that you can share when you're trying to sell this B2B solution.

Angela Ruggiero: So sports again is not only a good place to demonstrate the capability, and say 90,000 people, they're all trying to get on wifi and suddenly you could demonstrate 5G technology with 100,000 people pressure testing on 10 different devices. Well, you could probably then power a city. To me it serves a number of functions. One, I want to win market share in sports. Okay, there's market share in sports alone. Two, there's market share in proving out my technology in sports, and then allowing that as a way to extend into bigger markets. And then three, just using it as this testing ground. Again, it's maybe you're not looking for market share, but you actually want to use almost this opportunity to sell and to test out what you said is possible, but demonstrate what's possible.

Shaye Roseman: So you took our course while you were a student at HBS. Has that offered any lessons to you as a startup founder?

Angela Ruggiero: Oh, absolutely. I love the BSSC. It was definitely one of my favorite classes. When I think about what we're trying to do for the industry, is help the industry better understand disruptive technologies that exist in sports. And while incumbents might have the best solution today, we advise our clients to really think about what's going to happen in the future.

Angela Ruggiero: So if you don't have your finger on the pulse, and I learned this obviously through Clay Christensen's class and a lot of the research that was presented to us as part of that course. If you don't really have your finger on the pulse of what's coming, you're going to make huge investments. You could potentially bankrupt your company if you're making the wrong decisions, especially if you're spending a lot of your capital on the technologies. And so our clients come to us really, one, helping them make decisions today, but really helping them make decisions for the future. So BSSC I think, one, just allowed me to see the challenges, practical challenges that industries face, better understand how disruption actually occurs, and as we think framing our business and how we're going to provide support to our clients, it's really with that lens in mind.

Shaye Roseman: So, I want to talk about keeping your finger on the pulse and thinking about the future, and particularly because the Sports Innovation Lab self identifies as a data-driven organization. Part of your mission has to do with, as you had said earlier, encouraging data-driven decision making in the industry, but at the same time you're trying to help some of these incumbents think about the future and what's next. So I'm curious how you bridge that gap because data of course is only available about the past.

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, no, it's a great question. So we're company agnostic. We want to help everyone. Big, small, whether you're on the supply side or the demand side, we think data is very powerful. And again, the sports industry historically has been very opinion driven, gut and intuition, or you hire a consulting firm that takes months and months to make decisions and is very costly, and to your point, is rear facing versus forward thinking.

Angela Ruggiero: So what we're building in our technology platform is as close as we think we can get to helping to predict what's happening. And it's allowing us to create signals, if you will, market signals in a similar way that a financial institution, or an analyst trying to predict the stock market might have access to data that shows when shifts are occurring in the market. So if we can see a signal in the market that says, okay, there's a lot of consolidation in this space or investment in this space, or this company's getting mentioned a lot in the news, that gives our analysts actually a leading indicator of what's to come.

Angela Ruggiero: And the analysts then can go deeper on behalf of our clients to help uncover what those signals mean. The data and intelligence that we're doing is the first of its kind. One, no one's ever mapped the market, full stop. So what is the sports tech market? And we've defined that. Two, how does our software enable our clients and our team, our internal team to see what's trending, what are the signals, what are the things that will best predict what's happening, who's trending, et cetera. And then we'll obviously overlay that with our analyst time, and a deeper understanding where we think we should be spending our time and focus, and as extension, our client's time and focus.

Angela Ruggiero: As an example, you could see if capital is being deployed in a certain part of the market and there's a ton of startups in that space. Well, that could be a signal for a disruptive innovation that a larger incumbent should be aware of. So if you're a an ESPN of the world, your big media behemoth. We all know that people are cutting their cords, they're not watching traditional linear broadcast. Well, someone like an ESPN might say, "Okay, well where should we be investing today to make sure we capture the consumers of tomorrow?" And we've mapped a market over the top platforms. Maybe you want to just digitally stream sports in a similar way that now you're used to doing on Netflix, or maybe ESPN might look at our data on VR and AR. Okay, if there's large investments in this space, we know they're going to be moving into sports. We know that the fan might not want to get off their couch and have a court side experience by putting a headset on. And that's technology that we're seeing hit the market today.

Angela Ruggiero: The list could go on and on, but as ESPN again, a big incumbent is thinking about innovating and staying relevant and shifting their business model, we're trying to identify the technologies that they should be aware of that can enhance their current fans' experience and their future fans' experience.

Shaye Roseman: Where should they be investing to enhance their future fans' experience?

Angela Ruggiero: Exactly. Again, I can list out all the options that are on the table. It's up to the incumbent to decide where to best put their capital. But we will tell you what's happening in the market and give again a predictor of where we think the market's headed. And by the way, it's not just what's happening in the sports tech market, it's also taking a look at other industries. If we study general consumer trends, and we'll stick with the ESPN example, if we know that the future of content, it has to be accessible. You don't want to pay a high price point. You want to be able to pull it on your phone or on demand when you want. We want it to be interactive. We now expect agency with our content. We expect to be able to interact on Twitter or interact with whatever platform you're on. You don't just want to sit back and passively watch something on TV anymore. You want to be a part of it.

Angela Ruggiero: And finally, we expect it to be social. There's a big push on Fortnite as an example, right? This E-sports, this youth... Every kid is on Fortnite. When we look at that we go, huh, kids are actually just being... It's a place to be social, and current entertainment doesn't offer that social component. So as we look at what's happening, not only in the sports industry but general consumer trends, that again allows us to give insights.

Angela Ruggiero: Again, back to BSSC, that's taught students, how do you look at not what's happening today, but really what's happening at the base level. And if you have your finger on the pulse there, you're better able to react as an incumbent. And if those incumbents aren't reacting, well that's great for the startups that we work with that realize they can fill that market niche, get a lock hold in those, and pull revenue from those bigger entities.

Shaye Roseman: And what challenges do you encounter in trying to drive innovation in some of these large organizations?

Angela Ruggiero: It's such a good question. So how are we selling into the market? I feel like we are a disruptive technology ourself.

Shaye Roseman: How so?

Angela Ruggiero: Because we're filling a niche that doesn't exist in the sports industry. No one's ever created a software platform that gives you B2B market intelligence squarely focused on sports tech, in an efficient, scalable way.

Shaye Roseman: And you mentioned jobs before.

Angela Ruggiero: Yes.

Shaye Roseman: A clear need that is-

Angela Ruggiero: There is a job to be done. To me, the job is we're going to help you understand, we're going to help you get smart. We're going to help you partner with the right organizations. The job is help me make the right decisions, help me promote what I'm doing. A lot of these companies are making the right decisions and they want to stand out because it's a confusing space. So I believe we're really servicing the market in a new way. And the challenge is, we have to convince the industry who's not used to buying a solution.

Angela Ruggiero: Sports Innovation Lab hasn't existed before. So I can't just say, "Oh, we're like... We don't have a comp out there that I could compare ourselves to." When you're not disruptive, you can say, "Oh, or we're like so-and-so." You're doing the same thing, maybe better or more efficient or more cost effective. We're doing something completely new.

Angela Ruggiero: I understand we have a market, need a niche, and we're disrupting consultancies. We're disrupting what you would do if you were getting on a plane, going to a conference. If you're going to a conference to get smart, you can do that on our platform. If you're hiring a consulting firm to understand this market, we've already done the research. If your previous way of doing things is gut and intuition and, "Hey, I know a guy," which is the sports industry, you should probably make your decisions based on data and not just gut and handshake agreements. And so, we're trying to change the way that people do business. And so there's challenges in that, but there's also enormous opportunity.

Shaye Roseman: And we've talked about disruption as originating from two different places. One, as a disruptive entrant, you can come in at the low end of a market where you're making in contrast to better or more expensive products, less good, less expensive products that are accessible to a much broader range of potential consumers. The other place it can originate is in that context of what we call non-consumption, which it sounds like is what you're getting out when you talk about serving a need in the market, or helping people accomplish a job for which there is no solution today. And so if I'm hearing you right, you seem to be describing this process of trying to sell your product to a community that's never even had the opportunity to buy or interact with something like your service.

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, no, you're right. I would say we are the latter. We are non-consumption, specifically on the sports side. When I mentioned market research or Gartner or Forrester, most leagues' teams federations have never heard of that. They've never bought market research before. They may have bought consumer data from Nielsen, but what we're doing is very unique. Now, when I sell into the tech market, they understand that, but we're doing it in a very different way. So I've challenges on both the supply and the demand side. But in aggregate, yes we are selling into non-consumption. And through time, again, the pyramid that we're all familiar with, as we move up the chain, I would like to take more market share from consultants and events companies. Some of the solutions exists today, but I think we can service in a much better, more efficient way tomorrow. So, it's start with the non-consumption, typical lock-in, grab, learn, and we're not a threat to anyone today, but tomorrow we will be.

Shaye Roseman: That's a good spot to be in. But I'm curious whether you have any predictions or visions for how the landscape or the industry as we know it will change in the next 10, 15 years.

Angela Ruggiero: So if we're talking about the business of sport, the typical revenue model today on the sports side has been, I'm going to sell you a ticket. I'm going to sell you a jersey or some merchandise, I'm going to sell my broadcast rights, which you can watch TV from home, and I'm going to sell sponsorship and slap some logos on the wall. And those four primary revenue streams will still exist in the future. But they're proliferating in a number of ways, and being broken apart in a number of ways because of technology. So now as you think about broadcast rights, well not everyone's watching TV, so I have to break up my digital rights. I have to figure out how I can still attract that young demographic in new and innovative ways. I'm actually moving away the idea of sports as an analog business to a digital business. I am now my own entertainment and media conglomerate. The core product is sport, but I'm actually a media engine.

Angela Ruggiero: It's a completely different way of thinking. Prior model is I'm just going to outsource, I'm going to sell my rights and you're going to give me a check, and I'm just going to redistribute as needed. And now what you see in sports in general, the future of sports, is the smart entities are either building those capabilities internally or being very smart on how they're selling those assets. Because at the end of the day... we're here in Boston, if you're a Red Sox fan 20 years ago, you could buy a ticket and go to the game or you could watch on your regional sports network. Well, a Red Sox fan now and say 10 years from now could be anywhere in the world, so now you're suddenly competing for eyeballs and mindshare with and against Liverpool or Manchester United, or maybe the LA Lakers or maybe the Olympics. And suddenly this proliferation of entertainment options in general is forcing the hand of the sports industry to become media and entertainment entities. And they have to figure out how to reshape, fundamentally reshape how they're structured and what their business is.

Angela Ruggiero: And I remember the example we, at the class we took on Walt Disney, they did something as small as create an hour... You have to wait in line for an hour. So the job to be done is to create an amazing experience while you're waiting in line. Well the future of sports means you're thinking about every single point along that before, during, and after journey to get to the venue, and you're creating a memorable experience. So maybe in the future your lines to get a beer at Fenway Stadium are enjoyable.

Angela Ruggiero: Maybe in the future, your facial recognition and your thumbprint will allow you to seamlessly without cash, without a phone, without a ticket, enter the stadium and feel secure that every single person in there, we know their identity and we know maybe a little bit more about them, so we can personalize the experience for them. So now we know who's watching and what they care about. We're going to personalize that experience. A similar way that we all know data's being collected on you. Well, in sports you might welcome that, because you're like, "Great, I get a better experience watching at home or in the venue." The brand, the sports brand itself, the league itself is going to actually help me have a more engaging, meaningful experience and ultimately create a better memory. The future athlete is going to have a ton of data coming off of them.

Angela Ruggiero: They're going to better understand their body and therefore better perform or better predict when they'll potentially get injured. The athlete of the future is going to be able to connect directly to the fan. We're seeing that on social media, become their own brands, go direct to consumer, and really create this more personalized, engaged experience with you, the fan.

Angela Ruggiero: The future venue is going to be a smart venue. It's going to be super accessible. It's going to be sustainable. It's going to be built in a way that's multipurpose. It's going to be something that you enjoy being a part of because you're connected to it. It knows who you are. And so your whole experience from getting there, to walking around the venue, to actually watching and participating in what's happening on the court or on the ice is more personalized for what you care about.

Angela Ruggiero: The future fan never has to leave their couch. They have endless, endless options. So it's not just red zone. You could watch anywhere, anytime, any format.

Shaye Roseman: What are established sports industry players and companies doing well today that will serve them well in that future?

Angela Ruggiero: Yeah, so established sports entities, the ones that are leaning forward, are experimenting. And again, classic BSSC theory, they realize that they have to earmark resources, protect those experiments in a way so that they can be successful. And while they might be a loss leader today, they know that that's the future tomorrow. So the leagues and the teams that we love are the ones that actively experiment, that aren't afraid to fail because they know they have to test these products. They're creating safe places to test these products. A great example is the G league for the NBA. They test a lot of their products and services there, away from the NBA and if they're successful, they bring them up to the MBA, or they'll bring them up to the WNBA.

Angela Ruggiero: The minor leagues for baseball serve as a great way to test new products and services out. Where there's a tricky thing being an Olympian serving for eight years on the executive board of the IOC, we can't experiment and the cities can't experiment in the same way a league that has 50 to a hundred games a year can. You have one point in time you got to deliver. It's high pressure. The whole world is watching, so it's a different model there. You have to make technology decisions years in advance, and you don't know where the market's going to be, say three, four years, when you make that decision. Whereas the leagues and teams, they can experiment on a daily basis, can try new technologies out, whether it's how do I allow the brands that are sponsoring us to better connect to consumers? Well, let's try new ways for fan engagement. Let's try out new technologies that allow us to make that association.

Angela Ruggiero: Well, the IOC, the Superbowl, think about these big events that have one point in time, they have to make those predictions and budget allocations years in advance. So it's trickier for those organizations. But overall your question was, who's doing it well and how, it's taking risks. At the end of the day, the future of sports is through technology. The pressures of what's happening today are new, and sports who previously had a monopoly, in my opinion, didn't have to evolve and innovate. They could sit back, you're still going to go to that game. You're going to pass it onto your kids, you're going to pay the expensive ticket price. Well, guess what, they're saying no. Consumers are saying no.

Angela Ruggiero: They're saying, "You know what? Maybe I'll spend a fraction of my dollar, but if you don't figure out how to personalize my experience, if you don't figure out how to give it to me when I want, how I want, and in a format that I want, I won't watch that content. I'll flip to another sport, or I'll flip to another vertical in entertainment."

Shaye Roseman: And that's forcing the change!

Angela Ruggiero: It's forcing the change. So technology is forcing it, and while the industry today I think says, "Well, look at our rights are going up, and look at how many people are engaging with us, we've never been bigger." The reality is less kids are playing sports. We see a decline in youth participation. We see a decline in the amount of eyeballs on linear broadcast, or the amount fans are willing to pay. We're seeing these early indicators that, look, the model's shifting underneath you, and you can get in front of it, because they still want that content, but you're competing now with forces that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago. Again, technology is reshaping every industry, and what's I think really important for the sports industry to understand is that there are competitive forces that exist today that they've never had to deal with in the past.

Shaye Roseman: So you're involved in counseling a lot of these large organizations about what they should do to exist in that future. How do you convince some of those big players of this need, when they say things like, "But look at the data, the trends are in our direction," or how do you make them realize that in fact the industry is changing around them? And that maybe the indicators are different than they have been in the past?

Angela Ruggiero: We try to give them facts. We try to give them data. We try to show the three fold increase in the last 10 years of sports tech companies hitting the market. We show the amount of investment being deployed in this space. We try to call it best practices, where a big incumbent is still doing well, and why are they doing that? How are they innovating? How are they still reaching consumers across the globe? How are they leaning in? So we study those case studies. We also track what's happening at the ground level, the startup level, which is a great leading indicator in terms of what's happening in the future.

Angela Ruggiero: And again, we love working with those that are leaning forward. Those that get it, those that know they have to innovate. They have to take a step back and take risks, and while they're at the top today, that doesn't necessarily mean there'll be at the top tomorrow. No matter, yeah, you could win championships, but at the end of the day, again, sports is just another form of entertainment. And so we try to call out the fact that if you're not leaning in and you're not adopting technology, that market share will slowly get eroded.

Shaye Roseman: You've also talked about, in addition to some of the quantifying, some of the physical aspects, and technology's ability to help us do that better. You've also talked about how technology can almost help relieve the burden of some of the teams of professionals, that professional athletes have had in the past. People like nutritionists, physical therapists, trainers, et cetera, and how really a lot of that can be supported by technology nowadays.

Angela Ruggiero: Well, this is again why I love technology and its impact, not just on the business of sports, but on the access of sports. Because I come from the Olympic world, where there's 205 National Olympic Committees, and not every National Olympic Committee can afford to have a nutritionist and a team doctor and a therapist and a sports psychologist. Well, in the future, I believe, these technologies and these platforms will allow the accessibility of the information of how to train in a very scalable way.

Angela Ruggiero: You want the best athletes up there and you don't want the results to be decided on who has more money to spend and more support. Ideally, you'd love to see who can achieve peak human performance because of willpower and things that are about human potential, not, "Well, they have a bigger entourage that can help them." So I think technology in the future will really allow you to, again, mitigate those variables that really present an unfair advantage today because of financial resources, and you're really going to start to see maybe smaller countries emerge, or athletes emerge that previously couldn't afford a nutritionist.

Angela Ruggiero: Well, now, okay, I run, I get my blood drawn, it's low cost to serve. I get my results back, and I have an itemized, personalized nutrition plan that costs you a fraction of what it costs today to have a full time nutritionist. So that's why, again, another reason I love what technology can do for sport, is it can provide access, better access and democratization for athletes globally, regardless of socioeconomic status or what their Federation or their National Olympic Committee can afford.

Angela Ruggiero: Technology provides more visibility for women's sports and for smaller niche sports that previously had never had visibility. When I was a kid, I wanted to play in the NHL because that's all I could see. And as Billy Jean King famously says, "If you can see it, you can be it." We know that in business, it's the same in sports. When you're a young person, you look up to your idols, and if all you see are male idols, it's harder for you to aspire to be like those individuals.

Angela Ruggiero: So I love technology because now it's providing these great platforms for women's sports and for smaller sports. So it's accessibility. And we know that the four or five sports aren't for everyone. People are different. They like different things, but to provide that platform so that more people ultimately can have a great experience watching sport, and hopefully they pick up a ball or a stick or a puck and they play sports, and they get the benefits of having that lifelong relationship of being active.

Angela Ruggiero: You don't need to be an Olympian. By providing accessibility to sports as a form of entertainment, I believe that trickle down effect is youth participation, and if you have more kids playing sports and enjoying sports, hopefully they grow up to be healthier individuals, and we're now helping to combat the obesity crisis.

Angela Ruggiero: So there's all these bigger sort of reasons why I love what we're doing. I believe technology will fundamentally shape the future of sports, and if the industry does it the right way, it doesn't lose out to all these other entertainment options, then you'll continue to keep mindshare and timeshare of young people, which are your future fan and your future athlete. And it's not just about elite athletes. It's about just enjoying and participating in sport for life.

Shaye Roseman: Well, Angela, thank you so much for being on the podcast, and wishing you the best of luck for the future of sport, and of the Sports Innovation Lab.

Angela Ruggiero: Thank you very much.

Clayton Christensen: Thank you for listening to us at Disruptive Voice. If you like our show and want to learn more, please visit us at our website or leave us a review on iTunes. Until next time, good luck everybody.