ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to contribute to the growing knowledge base on sport innovation by investigating collaborative innovation in sport. It explains the relationship between innovation and sport, and demonstrates how sport innovation can be enhanced through collaboration. Sport is inherently innovative because of its capacity to adapt, evolve and change based on social, political and technological trends. Collaborative innovation is built on several theoretical standpoints. Theories of 'network governance', which value the role collaboration and networks play in working towards finding innovative solutions to complex social issues are central here. To expand and reinforce this new collaborative approach to sport innovation, there is a need for a broad range of empirical studies of collaborative innovation in different sporting contexts. Innovation represents complex processes that often lead to both intended and unintended outcomes. Working towards innovative solutions to social exclusion and wicked problems in sport it will be important to evaluate the innovation outcomes of collaborative practices between stakeholders.
