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In the early morning hours of August 26, South African long-distance runner Sibusiso Kubheka became the first person to complete a 100-kilometer run (thats 62.14 miles) in less than six hours. He beat the previous world record by 6 minutes and 15 seconds. The race featured five of the planets fastest endurance runners at the Nard Ring high-performance test track in Lecce, Italy. With a time of 5 hours, 59 minutes, and 20 seconds, 27-year-old Kubheka not only has expanded the limits of what we thought humans were capable of in terms of distance and speed, but also made one helluva commercial for Adidas. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) The run is part of a broader project by the brand called Chasing 100, in which Adidas worked to fine-tune its apparel and footwear in order to break the 100-kilometer record. If this sounds familiar, then youve likely seen Nikes 2017 documentary Breaking2, chronicling its thn-failed attempt to break a 2-hour marathon. Or its newest series airing on Prime called Breaking4, about Kenyan runner Faith Kipyegons quest to be the first woman to break the 4-minute mile. The Breaking2 livestream event attracted more than 20 million viewers and racked up 2 trillion social impressions months before the doc even aired on National Geographic. [Photo: Adidas] Chasing100 is the latest entry in this arms race of branded stunt running content that is pushing athletes, sports science, running tech, and designers into new and exciting places. Just as important, these are benchmarks for the brands involved to showcase their innovation chops to customers and potential customers around the world. Running is a pursuit of fine margins, with brands of many sizes racing for the throne. Here, Adidas has tossed down a gauntlet it hopes will boost its brand image among everyone from elite runners to everyday joggers. [Photo: Adidas] Designing for a world record The four other athletes who took part in the race were previous 100-kilometer world-record-holder Aleksandr Sorokin of Lithuania, Jo Fukuda of Japan, current 80-kilometer world-record-holder Charlie Lawrence of the U.S., and former 50-kilometer world-record-holder Ketema Negasa of Ethiopia. Adidas worked with each one to customize its Adizero Evo Prime X, fine-tuning the shoes to fit each runners distinctive style. The runners also utilized the brands Ultracharge system, which puts the shoes in a pressurized container for several days ahead of the race to give the midsole foam increased responsiveness. [Photo: Adidas] The runners werent the only ones racing. Harry Miles, Adidass director of football innovation, said the process of designing these custom shoes began in February and testing took place in July. The company shrunk its R&D-to-production schedule significantly, thanks to new methods and tech that allowed for the creation of the shapes and materials much more quickly than ever before. Miles is cagey about the new methods, calling them the brand’s “secret sauce.” We wanted to build the most innovative shoe we’ve ever built for these conditions, Miles says. But we didn’t want to make it easy. We wanted to make it a tough test for the product and also the athletes, to prove that they can do something that most people think is impossible. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) On the apparel side, racers used the Climacool system to cool down their core body temperatures before running in the heat and humidity of southern Italy. Its the same combination of cooling and insulating techwith a cooling vest and insulation jacketworn by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team. [Photo: Adidas] Each runner had their own cooling neck bands, which could be swapped out and refreshed during the race. The Clima 3D singlet features 3D-embossed material (like small rubber nubs) body-mapped to areas of the shirt with the highest skin contact and sweat production to improve airflow, sweat evaporation, and cooling. [Photo: Adidas] The TechFit shorts feature stiffening bands strategically placed for each runners body to stabilize the hips, supporting running economy and endurance. Commercial versions of both the shorts and singlet will be available to the public sometime next year. Margherita Raccuglia, Adidass director of athlete performance, led the apparel team. She says that endurance, speed, and heat management were the three main factors in the design process, along with a fair amount of customization for each individual runner. [Photo: Adidas] There is a certain amount of familiarizationand adaptation to the product that is not to be underestimated because, of course, there is always the physiological and physical performance, but there is also the cognitive part [of the] performance, Raccuglia says. Athletes are very ritualistic, and they love their routine. Even a centimeter off in their socks is going to put them off. So our job and our challenge throughout the process was really to fine-tune the product into the best possible performance while still being something that the athletes feel comfortable with. Both Raccuglia and Miles credit the rapid prototyping their teams were able to do with giving the athletes equipment that was optimized for their bodies. The approach is really going back to the basis of what Adidas is and what our fundamentals are, which is only the best for the athletes, Miles says. Really being there and crafting it with them. The most difficult part to solve is the final 5%, right? But that’s also where you just have to kind of roll up your sleeves. [Photo: Adidas] Process vs. Results A project like this is about accomplishing multiple goals simultaneously. For the runners, it is the athletic achievement. For the product designers and engineers, it is a massive investment and opportunity in R&D. And for the brands, more than anything else, it is myth-making. Embracing and aiming for impossible goals will appeal to any athlete or sports fan. So documenting the process and telling the whole story creatively is (or should be) inextricable from the goal of breaking a performance record. It’s truly exciting to go after what is going to be the fastest 100-kilometer run in history, but really showcasing that process is also a critical piece, says Marc Makowski, senior vice president of creative direction and innovation at Adidas. We start by looking at moments that really shape what the future of sport is going to look like, and then use an opportunity like Chasing100 to bring together the most daring designs we’re creating. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) Chasing and Breaking In both of Nikes Breaking projects, the brand not only designed and worked on equipment to help the runners achieve their goals but also picked locations with optimal conditions to break records. Adidas took a different approach, choosing southern Italy in the summertime in order to have an intentionally challenging environment for the race. The strategy was to push the runners and their gear to the edge of their abilities. The learnings are almost endless for the team moving forward, Makowski says. There are so many things here that will inform the next generation of endurance- and speed-related projects. So far, Adidas has been putting out social content around the race and Kubhekas accomplishment. There are plans to launch a long-form piece of content in the coming weeks that will tell the story behind the new record. It will be interesting to see just how much this new storyand how its tolddiffers from Nikes Breaking work. In some ways, there is a pretty clear formula to work from: Introduce audiences to a cast of charactersthe runners, designers, engineers, and support staffand use the buildup to the race to establish emotional stakes. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) This type of blockbuster, event-driven content is where giants like Adidas and Nike have an advantage over challengers like Brooks, Saucony, Asics, On, and Hoka. Both brands trace their roots to track and field. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon. Adolf Dassler and Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their scale as global brands, now across many different sports, fuels their ability to flex that strength in telling these specific stories in running. With Chasing100, Adidas has collected the characters, from the runners and their backstories to company insiders like Miles and Raccuglia. Now it needs to truly convey the drama and gear-nerd design process in a compelling way. If it can do that, we may just be embarking on an intriguing arms race of running content that will straddle sports storytelling and brand innovation in new ways. On your mark, get set.
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E-Commerce
A small town in Finland is experimenting with a new type of infrastructure: the world’s largest sand battery. The batterya 42-foot-tall, nearly 50-foot-wide silo filled with 2,000 tons of crushed stonesits on the edge of a parking lot. When there’s extra renewable electricity on the grid and power is cheap, the system uses electricity to heat up the crushed stone. That heat is stored in the battery until nearby buildings need to use it. [Photo: Polar Night Energy] The basic approach is simple. “We just heat air and [circulate it] through sand,” says Liisa Naskali, COO of Polar Night Energy, the Finnish startup that designed the technology. Sand, or other material crushed into sand-size particles, has the ability to store heat for weeks. Unlike some other batteries, the system doesn’t rely on chemicals, doesn’t degrade, and won’t catch on fire. The town, called Pornainen, relies on a district heating network to heat a group of buildings, from city offices and the local school to some businesses and apartment complexes. Until recently, the network burned oil or wood chips to run. But the municipality is aiming to become carbon neutral, and realized that it needed to make a change. [Photo: Polar Night Energy] Now if someone in a nearby apartment turns on hot water for a shower, the heat comes from the sand battery. Like other district heating systems, the heat from the battery travels to other buildings via pipes filled with hot water; each building has its own equipment to distribute the heat to radiators, floor heaters, or other HVAC systems. [Photo: Polar Night Energy] The battery started running this summer, and was officially inaugurated this week, meaning the district heating system no longer uses oil at all. Over the summer, it relied entirely on the sand battery. As the weather gets colder, the system will use both the battery and wood chips, but the use of wood chips can drop by around 60%. (Burning wood chips is technically carbon neutral since trees take in carbon as they grow, but since trees are slow to grow and burning is fast, it’s not a good short-term climate solutionand it also produces a lot of other pollution.) [Photo: Polar Night Energy] Though the startup calls the technology a “sand” battery, it can use other materials. For the new installation in Pornainen, the company turned to soapstone scraps from a nearby fireplace manufacturer. That helped reduce waste and avoided the environmental challenges of sourcing sand, which is typically excavated from rivers, lakes, or shorelines. [Photo: Polar Night Energy] Inside the silo, the company uses a heat exchanger and a closed-loop system to circulate heat. Software runs heaters when electricity prices are low. Throughout the summer, Naskali says, the utility paid around 10% of the average price of electricity by charging only at optimal times. That helps make the technology cost-competitive, though the initial installation cost is high, she says. The startup is now in talks with other utilities. Factories can also use the technology to replace fossil fuels for high-heat processes. Other startups, including Rondo Energy and Antora Energy, are also pioneering new approaches to thermal energy storage. For Polar Night Energy, the project in Pornainen is a critical proof point. “This is really important for us, Naskali says, because now we can show thatthis really works.
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E-Commerce
Its been 70 years since Douglas McGregor sketched a management theory at MIT Sloan that leaders still ignoreand their teams pay the price. Known as Theory X and Theory Y, McGregors framework built on Abraham Maslows work on employee self-actualization, and it quickly became one of the foundational texts of modern management thinking. In McGregors theory, leaders fall into two camps. Theory X managers assume that employees are inherently lazy, need constant supervision, and would rather coast along than contribute. Theory Y managers, by contrast, see employees as self-motivated, responsible, and capable of growth if given the right environment. The kicker is that both kinds of managers usually get exactly the employees they expect, no matter who they originally hired. What McGregor was tapping into was the fact that certain beliefs have an uncanny way of turning into real, measurable effects on human behavior. Whether its placebo studies in medicine or examining how teachers’ expectations impact classroom performance, the science is unambiguous about how simple expectations can have far-reaching effects. The psychology behind high expectations Psychologists were among the first to observe and take note of the feedback loops expectations set off. Take the now-famous study by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson in 1968. Elementary school teachers were told that a group of randomly selected students had been identified as “late bloomers” who were about to show remarkable academic growth. The result surprised even the researchers themselves. Those students did indeed outperform their peers, in part because the teachers, subconsciously or not, started treating them differently by offering more encouragement, more patience, and more challenging material. The students responded in kind, rising to the challenge now that someone in authority believed them capable of meeting it. The only thing that had changed was the expectations. The expectation effect Journalist David Robson chronicles just how far this phenomenon goes in The Expectation Effect (which should be required reading for leadership). From placebo heart surgeries that deliver real relief to workouts that burn more fat just because people believe theyre working harder, Robson lays out the scientific evidence showing how our expectations construct reality around us. The psychology behind the effect is simple: Your brain doesnt sit around waiting for input like a neutral recordkeeper. It ceaselessly guesses and simulates what might happen so that you can be prepared for whatever comes across your desk. At each moment, the brain is busy constructing an internal map of whats likely to happen, and then it updates that map based on whatever comes next. Its no surprise to find that our expectations prime the brains sensory and emotional circuits almost as if something is already happening. If you are expecting pain, the amygdala lights up before you even stub your toe. If you expect failure, your cortisol rises, attention narrows, and your working memory takes a hit before youve even started the task. Expect a sense of existential dread and meaninglessness at work? Here you go, says the brain, lowering your dopamine levels until motivation plummets because your brains prediction model no longer sees a reason to invest cognitive effort. Thats why a sugar pill can relieve chronic pain, why sham surgeries produce real outcomes, and why a warm-up jog feels harder if you think it’s the workout. The experience conforms to the prediction, and belief becomes biology. When leaders talk about setting the tone or creating a culture of excellence, theyre not that far from hitting upon something truly powerful. If we accept that expectations change biology, cognition, and motivation, then leveling them appropriately becomes one of leaderships central tasks. Careful what you expect, because you might get it If you walk into a boardroom assuming your team lacks ambition, youll subconsciously act like it by designing processes that assume failure. Your team, in turn, will rise, or in this case, sink, to the level you’ve set. Welcome to management by cynicism. Nelson Repenning, an MIT Sloan professor and coauthor of the new book Theres Got to Be a Better Way, has spent his career helping leaders break out of this cycle. He advises people to expect more, and better, from others as a starting point. When people fail, we treat it like a character flaw. But in most organizations, failure is a design problem, he says. The question every leader should ask isnt Why did they screw up? Its What about our system made it easy to screw up? Repenning and longtime collaborator Don Kieffer argue that modern management has become too disconnected from the work itself. Youd be amazed how many executives cant describe how the work actually gets done, Kieffer says. Its like trying to fix a car without opening the hood. These leaders cant set a good expectation because theyre so far removed from reality to begin with. Without that intimacy, leaders default to assumptions, not expectations. Before long, youre managing caricatures of your team instead of the real people doing the work. Great leaders dont set expectations and step back Anyone can ask for a 17% increase in revenue and expect it to happen, Repenning says. But thats not a healthy way to set goals, let alone a culture of expectations. Leaders need to know what they are asking for, and they need to understand how powerful the expectations they set are. This is where too many leaders trip over their own lofty visions. They expect more but enable less. Perhaps some even care less. Repenning calls this the paradox of servile leadership: Great leaders dont set expectations and step back. They ask, What do you need from me to get there? Then they go and move those boulders. The accompanying leadership model isnt that much more complicated. Set the target, communicate belief, and then roll up your sleeves to start fixing whats brokenwhether its systems, workflows, org charts, tools, or, yes, your assumptions. McGregor and Maslow would be nodding along if they were still with us. Decades before we started talking about psychological safety and employee empowerment, they argued that the job of management was to unlock people’s natural drive. Give them autonomy and show them how their work connects to a bigger picture. Eliminate the management by the stopwatch and start practicing management by the soul. Expectation is freedisappointment is expensive If you expect your team to take shortcuts, youll create a culture of cutting corners. If you expect your team to challenge ideas, theyll innovate. If you expect mediocrity, youll be surrounded by it. And the inverse holds, too. When a leader believes in their people, when they really believe in their capacity to achieve, something remarkable happens: People stretch to meet the expectations and trust begins to compound. Done right, simply expecting greatness might do more than any retreat r bonus ever could, Repenning says. But expecting isnt enough. You still have to earn it. Thats the fine print of McGregors theory, and the trap too many leaders fall into. They want the results of Theory Y, but still manage like they believe in Theory X. The message that sends is I dont really think youve got it in you. But prove me wrong. Thats not leadership. Thats abdication. And now you know how to do better.
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E-Commerce
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