From innovation to new sport development: a slippery slope?

This paper provides and expands upon a conceptual framework in order to understand the development of a new sport from a product innovation. The example of the snowboard provides a detailed illustration of this process in a winter sports context and was specifically chosen for its ability to deliver tangible evidence of market acceptance by a defined market segment serviced by clearly identifiable suppliers. A model is developed, based on original quantitative and qualitative research, which both underpins the conclusions for this study and provides a direction for future work in the area of product innovation in new sport development. The paper concludes that snowboarding has achieved the status of a new sport.