On May 20, join me at HBR's annual leadership summit with master classes, interviews with the CEOs of AT&T and Mattel and an interactive case discussion led by Harvard Business School Professor Kareem Lakani. This all virtual day will give you practical frameworks to lead with purpose and strengthen culture across your organization. To learn more go to hbr.org/leadershipsummit, see you there. Welcome to Cold Call, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking ideas and Harvard Business School case studies. Today on Cold Call, we're looking at a sport where innovation doesn't come from flash or funding, but from rethinking first principles. The sport is speed skating, and we're dropping this episode during the 2026 Winter Olympics. The US men's speed skating team is coming off years of disappointment, searching for a breakthrough in the team pursuit event. The innovation works. Sometimes drop, records fall, medals could follow, so the question at the heart of this case and the one we'll explore today is this, when winning depends on innovation. How do you decide whether your greatest advantage should be protected or shared? Today on Cold Call, we'll discuss the case a winning strategy, innovation and Olympic speed skating with Professor Rebecca Carp. I'm your host Brian Kenney, and you're listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network. Rebecca Carp's research examines how companies formulate and execute strategies. In particular, she focuses on the role, innovation and product development play and competitive advantage. That sounds absolutely appropriate for today. Welcome Becky. Thank you so much for having me. Great to have you on Cold Call. We're doing this very quickly to have it coincide with the 2026 Olympics, so thanks for being flexible. Oh, what a pleasure to be here and what an ideal time. Did you know that the US is hosting the largest team ever? Have you ever hosted in the Olympics before? I did not know that. Speed skating, by the way, is not a sport that I have followed closely. I learned a lot actually from reading the case just about the sport itself. It is really fun to watch, but the only time you really hear about it or think about it is during the Olympics, right? That's totally correct. To be honest, not a sport that I followed either, except to know that over the years, I mean, the US for so many years was extremely successful in the sport. When you can think of many different athletes who have graced the podium for the US in the sports. Most recently, we've definitely had a derse of medals. It's interesting that sort of what attracted me to this case a little bit was this question, why were we so successful and then what happened and then what could we possibly do to come back to our old form? Yeah. And the case points out in great lengths that Norway apparently is the country to beat. They have just a huge gap in terms of the number of medals that they win versus other countries. So I think it's the Netherlands. The Netherlands is just, yeah, in which makes sense, right? All these stories about the canals breezing and people skating on the canals, but you're right. If we think about the all-time greatest medal winners in the sport, it's the Netherlands and then it's Norway and then it's the US. So this is the entry. It's one of those cases. We've been doing co-call for 10 years. We've done hundreds of cases and every so often you get one that you're like, wow, I never would have thought that that would be a case. Right. If I were a business school, so I'm just wondering, you talked a little bit about it, but maybe a little more detail on how you came to, first of all, to hear about this and then to think about this as something that would be worth bringing into the NBA classroom. So I think there's this really interesting question that pretty much universally almost all companies face. And should you launch a novel idea or a novel product? We can think about the film industry. When should I put out that film? Is there a seasonally specific time or a new piece of software? And it may not always be the second it's ready to publish. I should push it out. And so this question of entry timing, I think is just such a universal question. Sometimes academics are broadly interested in random topics. And I sort of remembered seeing as a spectator, as someone who's super interested in the Olympics, the story unfold a little while back four years ago now for the US. And being intrigued by it and then reading about it and learning that kind of the essential question for them was really this question about timing. They had this really novel idea that they had developed, but this question about like when should they launch this novel technique? But it really has come to dominate the field. So like pretty much everyone does the American push now in the team pursuit events. And so that's really what attracted me because it was such a good case of type situation for things that companies face. But sort of in this simple scaled back way to really examine the dynamics of entry timing. Yeah. And I love the tie back to business, which is of course what we're always doing here. The case does a great job explaining as we just talked about the huge gap. And it seemed like in the case of the US Olympic team, incremental innovation wasn't going to get the job done. And we're talking about like milliseconds, like tiny, tiny, tiny, you know, amounts of time here. But it seemed like they needed something, a step change of some sort, right? Can you talk a little bit about that and why incremental innovation just wasn't going to work? Incremental innovation can get you there when you're close. And really the US was so far away, I think it was something like four or five seconds from the Dutch. And that does sound like as you said, a small amounts, but realistically that's a significant amount difference in a sport where literally milliseconds matters. And so incremental innovation in this space was just not going to work. But there's also this kind of approach or like mindset to innovation that, you know, is worth considering too. So in this case, incremental might not work. But also, you know, if you take this back to kind of company perspective, you think there's like companies that prefer incremental innovation or are strategically very good at executing on incremental innovation in some companies that are not that really their special sauce is really thinking and reimagining the way that the system or the industry could work. And that's really where they kind of source their competitive advantage. And so that's also kind of a strategic decision, like whether you want to kind of be focused incrementally or if you really think that you have the skill to be able to kind of reimagine the system at large. Yeah. And I think the case also points out that this was not necessarily a matter of effort. Everybody was working really hard, you know, the team was training hard. People were trying to get it done and just it still wasn't working. How was it that they sort of figured out a different way of looking at it rather than just saying everybody put more effort in? The story a little bit as they tell it is such that they realized right, like the additional extra effort just wasn't going to do it. And so they brought in someone from the outside, which is so interesting here. They brought in an expert who actually had expertise in biking. And it was kind of this outsider who could see the world differently, who was like, why are we so focused on this and not this? And I think that's true oftentimes when we think about like innovating in terms of reimagining the system, like these outside perspectives and being able to draw on these outside perspectives end up being like really useful and thinking about innovation that takes you kind of, that makes a real step change in performance. And so what happened is they brought in this expert with all this expertise in the biking industry and he figured out through watching them and they had this question like, you know, incidentally, when we're skating, we always end up pushing each other. So this like a good thing or is this actually a problematic thing? And he learned through observing what they were doing that the pushing actually was critical. And if they could maximize the pushing that they actually could think about the whole way that they were approaching the race differently. I'd reflect on like again, is this outside perspective that really helped them figure this out. But oftentimes, and I'm sure you've seen this in the firms that you studied, we get this, I think we refer to it as a not invented here mentality where, you know, that person doesn't know our industry. They couldn't possibly understand us well enough to be able to tell us how to do this better. Totally. And I think there is much of that there too. That's why partially this question about when to launch became such an important piece of the puzzle. So when you have an outsider who comes in and kind of helps you rearchitect the entire system, you need more touch points, more experimentation, more proof points that it actually is going to work and that we're going to believe it. Like a major challenge for the team was, okay, we can see in expectation that maybe this technique will work better. But can we get the right athletes? So then the question of talent becomes more prominent. Okay, it's not just that we reengineer the technique, but then we also need to attract the very best skaters on our team to come and race it. But what's the incentive for them to do that, especially when you have this outsider who's kind of designed this new system? Yeah, yeah. For the benefit of our listeners who don't understand the sport that well, forever the way that speed skating was done was you had a team and you had somebody on the front and they would stay on the front for a while and exert all their energy. And then they would drop off and somebody else would move up to the front and they would exert all their energy. And so what you had at the end of that race was for exhausted skaters. And here what they were developing came to be known as the American push. I think that's the term that you use in the case where instead of having everybody up front, one person stays up front and the others get behind and literally push them physically. And that's the sort of where you get the bike racing analogy. Yeah, exactly.
So very akin to biking, the way the race always traditionally was run is as you put it, you would have your strongest skater out front and when he or she got tired, he or she would rotate to the back. But can you imagine just thinking about the aerodynamics of this? When you're going towards the back, you're getting all this drag, right? And so the innovation here was like, how do we eliminate that drag? In the way you eliminate that drag is to have no one rotate. And to move your best skater from the front to the back and have that person just push basically everybody else forward and that eliminates this drag and improves kind of the aerodynamics of the system. And that's what helped erase this gap in timing with the Dutch. So how do you convince the other people on the team that this is worth doing? Again, we'll go back to, you know, right back into the business sense, like you're trying to do something that is radically different than's been done before. There's a lot of risk there. And on this grand stage, if you were to take this out into a competitive race, there's the prospect of failure that could be really, really difficult. Sure. And beyond that, it's not something like Brian, you and I can show up and just do it. This is a team of that. It's the team pursuit. So there's a level of training that needs to go into practicing this. So you're talking to all of these skaters, who by the way are also doing these individual races, who have to make the evaluation. Should I expend my extra energy on working on my individual race so that I can win gold? Or should I try this new technique that I've never skated before that requires coordination with these other athletes to layer another complication. It's not like these athletes live next to each other. And so they still have to practice together. So now I have to do something I've never done and I have to locate with the people on my team that I'm doing it with. So this all adds complication. And for someone who believes that they might, you know, meddle in an individual race, should the very best talent be expending their resources time budget. Because remember, the US team is not funded by the government, right? Like people are self-funded or they're getting sponsors. So there's this big huge resource time attention question associated with expending kind of those things on learning the technique. But this is like not untrue if we bring the contrast back to the business world of, you know, we have this new approach. And you want to get your very best people on the company working on the new approach, refining the new approach. But why should they expend their time, attention when they're probably already working on their own projects, their own agenda? So this is like a very parallel type situation to I think what many companies face when they try to get their very best people to work on something that's new. It's also a bit of an all or nothing thing, right? You can't do this and say, well, we're going to try this, but we'll keep doing it the way that we used to do. You've got to make the decision. How does a leader think about that in a business context? You know, when is it okay to do something, again, incrementally as we talked about before? When do you need to just say we can't, we got to completely redo this thing? Yeah, I mean, I think in the case of the US team, it was very clear that they were not going to win unless they made like a remarkably, it makes it easier. You know, things are not always that clear cut in the business arena. But we can think like how much do you lag your competitors? Is it realistic that you're really going to close the gap by adding another feature to your product? But also, if you add another feature to your product, do you kind of make the product more similar to that of your competitor and thus, like you're really not creating any differentiation or distinction in the way that you can win? I think companies are quite afraid to reimagine the system often for the reasons we described, right? Like convincing the best people to work on it is often hard. They have all sorts of other obligations. But in the same regard, sometimes that's exactly what's required if you want to win. Spoiler alert, because you actually wrote a B case, which I love because the B case kind of tells us what happened here. You want to talk a little bit about the results that the US Olympic team experienced? Yeah, sure. So in the case, you know, this question of timing becomes the central question we ask in the case. And it's whether the US team should launch the technique in the world championship, which is two years before the Olympics. And they decide to launch two years earlier. And the rationale for doing that is really to satisfy some of the questions you asked earlier. It was to show that the technique was quite good and it assured kind of the very best talent that it was worth their while to invest their time and effort in the technique. It also helped them get other sponsors on board because they became more competitive. So it helped them mobilize and acquire resources, meaning like the US team. So that was sort of the rationale for doing it. The challenges, the second they kind of let the genie out of the bottle, all of the other teams were able to observe what it was that the US was doing. Yeah, which was their fear, which is a legitimate concern, right? So how do you think about that? Again, in a business context, I mean, there is such a thing as first mover advantage, but we all know that there are fast followers who can, you know, chip away at that as a business leader. How would you think about the risks there? It's interesting. We teach this in the case too. So the first question you have to ask is, is it so that nobody really knows about this thing that we're doing? Is it really only one to know? Like, is this really so secretive? Because in the case of the US, it's probably true that it wasn't. I don't know for sure. They would know better. But, you know, it's reasonable to think that skaters were aware of what the US is doing. It's a small community of people. It's reasonable to think that other teams were experimenting similarly. You know, novel or twin innovation happens all the time. And so what were teams really evaluating when the US raised was probably how well the technique worked? So it wasn't that they were just becoming aware of it. It was really how well the technique worked. So that's the first question you really have to ask is, are your competitors already aware of it? And then secondly, what are they really learning from you when you launch something? Is it awareness? Or is it really like they're learning something about performance? And the third question you have to kind of ask is, would you do anything differently? Yeah. If it changes one of those two things. And I think in the case for the US, they really couldn't because of these needs to get the best talent interested in the technique or to get sponsors mobilized. I think, you know, there were these other reasons why they needed to launch at the time. Or it's also possible that they mispredict it how long it would take others to perfect the technique. So it took them about a year and a half, two years to perfect the technique. And it's possible that they extrapolated that timing onto others. But that's another question you have to ask. If I launch this now, what's the learning curve for others? Is it that they will learn at the same speed that we learned or is it that they will learn in a faster clip? And if it's true that they were already aware of the technique, it's very possible that they've already been working on it. And thus their learning curve is going to be, you know, shorter or they will have started the learning process such that they can apply it faster than we would have expected. So those are some of the core questions I think you need to ask about the launch or the entry timing decision. The other thing we think about in class frequently is about like the nature of what you're sharing. In this case, the technique, once seen, cannot be unseen, right? It's highly replicable. Like you see what people are doing and maybe to perfect it, you need some more specialized knowledge. But you can kind of start to, you understand what's going on. Not all types of products, knowledge are so easily replicable by others. And thus thinking about the entry decision is different based on kind of the nature of the information that's getting shared. Right. So some things might be harder to imitate than others, which means you might have a little more sustainable advantage than you actually realize that you have. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just wondering also about how winning changes sort of incentives around openness as you unveil this thing and it starts to work. Do you just sort of get excited by it and say, you know what, we feel like we're going to continue to innovate and we don't care if people see how we do it because we think we can do it better. I love this question. I think that that's exactly right. My guess and having no real knowledge about their perspective is the better you get at innovating the more you do it. So what ends up happening right is they launch the technique in the world championship and when it comes to the Olympics, the Norwegian team and the Russian team follow suit. And they end up beating the US team. And so the US team ends up competing for bronze and they do win the bronze medal, which is fabulous because they haven't had a medal and so long. It's better than nothing and kudos to them. And also, you know, that was during co there was so many complications associated with that win. But they certainly did not win gold and their competitors indeed did copy their technique, right? Yeah. But I think what it's done is fostered this interest and innovation. And so I would expect that they continue to innovate in ways that were really productive and help them kind of get on top. Yeah. Now it's interesting because the whole conversation we've been toggling back and forth between sports and business. I want to reverse the toggle at this point because in business, if you have things like intellectual property, you have you have legal rights to ideas when you when you get them.
can file a patent. That's probably not the case in sports training. I'm wondering, as you think about this, is there a way that they could be somehow protecting what they're doing? Or should they be thinking about that? I think that that would be quite hard, Ryan. I do think even in the business arena, of course, there's a lot of information that even if protected is not necessarily goes unchared. IP protection is hugely valuable to companies, but there's a lot of innovation that cannot be protected. You could think about the assembly line innovation that Ford created. Certainly a revolutionary concept that now is widely used and was not patents, right? So there's tons of different types, particularly processed innovation that's more difficult sometimes to patent, similar to the American push, not really a way to patent that. Yeah. I think about it on call call. We've discussed cases before where innovations were shared as a way to elevate an entire industry. A firm comes up with an idea. They're trying to get all the boats to rise at the same time because they want to elevate the industry itself. There's another possible reason why you might share an idea or an innovation. 100%. Let's just say, bringing it back to our speed skating example. Let's say, to fabulous sport, but maybe it doesn't get the eyeballs of some of the other sports, right? If you're able to improve the competitiveness of the sport altogether, then are you able to draw more eyeballs and as a result, more sponsorship? Thinking about the collective is certainly another reason why one might share an innovative idea or product broadly. This has been a really fun conversation, Becky. I knew it would be. I'm so glad that we're able to do it during the Olympics. If there's one thing you want people to remember about the speed skating case, what would it be? I would like them to remember to really think about when they decide to launch a novel idea, product or service, and what it means if you are imitated. What's the results of that on your business and what's the next step? It's inevitable that it'll happen. So what are you going to do next? And then if I might say, go US, I was going to say that to you. We do have a global audience, but we're going to say go US because we're both here in the United States. And yay, I hope the US speed skating team does great this year. I'm right with you. Becky, thanks for joining me. Pleasure. If you enjoy cold call, you might like our other podcasts, climate rising, coaching real leaders, idea cast, managing the future of work, sky deck and think big by small. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. Please email us at
[email protected] if you have any suggestions or just want to say hello. Thanks again for joining us. I'm your host Brian Kenney and you've been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR podcast network.
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