Value from Sport – sports as a tool for business development, corporate responsibility and value creation

The project is important for three reasons. First of all, sports has special features, which can be benefited and applied in the business development of companies and as a source of value creation. On the one hand, it is a question of novel ways of leading and inspiring people, and on the other hand about enforcing the kind of cultural factors which promote, e.g. open-minded experiments and learning from failures.

Secondly, there is evidence in the world on combining the special features of sports and business, but the Finnish research on the topic is insufficient. Finnish research is needed, because lots of country-specific special features are related to sports, and thus the practices that work in the international context cannot be applied to Finland as such. If the country-specific features are not taken into account, it is difficult to shift from the traditional buying and selling of visibility to activity where sports is profoundly benefited in improving customer experiences, constructing brands and communicating corporate responsibility.

Thirdly, especially in Finland, business potential is related to the sports field and to applying its special features, and realising that potential increases the competitiveness of Finnish companies in the global economy. In the project, the produced understanding and practical concepts serve growth-oriented and internationalizing Finnish companies. Approximately ten different-sized companies from both the consumer and business market and the service and production sector are represented in the project. The project indirectly affects hundreds of Finnish companies through the Finnish Olympic Committee, national sports organizations, regional sports clubs and field organizations.