Thread regarding Adidas layoffs

Totally Disagree.
What innovation? Innovation was miadidas platform and the robot making shoes AM4 something, I can’t remember. Both shutdown.

4D been done by other brands. Stale and old.

Boost - not even adidas innovation. BASF which is also shared by puma and other companies. (Puma called it faas) 12 years old and
Very Stale

Predator? Decreasing or moving dots to help swerve. Old. Dated. Stale.

PrimeKnit. Stale ……….old ten years ago.

Pharrell - stale lack luster sales. Now he’s the face of a luxury brand.

What innovation ?
Forecasting? We suck. (Inventory)
Where’s that Brooklyn farm again?
Where’s Lorenzo again?
Where’s youth sports (besides soccer)

Hoka. On. Ki-ling it.

@1nzp+1lz4zB1l

Hey, can you expand a little bit further your ideas? I think you did not add enough racism

We wouldn't need to discuss about internal stuff in the first place on an external website if they would have not ki-led the only internal platform to voice criticism in the company which was "Ask the management". Of course people will complain about their sausage not being warm enough there but at least they would not fire it out in the open while being frustrated.
I don't think adidas is behind in innovation. We have the coolest brand technologies out there. Maybe we should have decision makers to use it and not compete about it too much.

@1nzp+1lz4zB1l
"you can’t even add items on your web store cart and have them appear in your app" honestly, if that's your example I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. You are right to an extent, Nike spend big money on dev centres in pricey locations (mind you Amsterdam isn't that cheap either) but what do they get? Has Nike really got a qualitative edge on SNKRS given all the money they dropped? Not a chance, drops on SNKRS still suck. Bjorn is right to focus on GTM because that's where time and again Nike wins, we can hold our own on innovation.

Having worked for both companies, I can say - adidas doesn’t have the budget to keep up with Nike in innovation.

Example:
adidas is investing in hiring a thousand low priced software developers / outsourcing IT developers to tech hubs in low income countries - to make SAP applications and try to make a decent retail application (and failing - you can’t even add items on your web store cart and have them appear in your app)….

Meanwhile Nike invests in Tech Innovation centers in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and at universities around the world. Where they focus their high priced / but more competent develops on: Customized product creation tools, developing robotics for 3D looming, redeveloping custom automation platforms for manufacturing. Working side by side with apple and Google and the owners of mobile device manufacturers to make native apps that work seamlessly.

The difference - is Nike invests in Tech innovation using high quality talent to change the process of manufacturing and quality. While adidas invests in low quality disposable IT workers to work in the confines of SAP and rudimentary systems and never get the end result right… and just spin their wheels.

This makes the tools and processes at adidas slow, always behind, never leading the industry. It creates poor work experiences for everyone, using out of date systems / never having the best compute systems and devices to have a proper digital process end to end to help aid innovation.

And this is just IT. Now take the same thing and apply it to chemistry, manufacturing, warehouse and logistics— where Nike will direct invest and adidas will try to contract to lowest bidder… and you see why the divide widens.

Adidas like to use consultants, and trust Gartner and Boston consulting, and Accenture — companies who have zero clue how to make sports ware. Nike trusts its internal experts most, and trusts people who actually participate in the sport, or know supply chain, to design for that aspect.

Adidas needs to fire the consultants, stop thinking low cost labor in India and Spain is the solution to the world of tech problems, and invest in innovative people that live in the areas their customers do, and know the issues.

Adidas as a lucky location in Oregon - where innovation for all the competition exists - yet it does NOTHING to pull talent from Nike / Columbia/ UA / Etc — and instead strangles it’s US HQ with cost cutting and rudimentary processes.

Wake up - you have your locations in the right area. Invest in your people. Stop trying to treat humans as low cost cogs in the machine —- because the machine is broken. You must build a new machine.

There‘s too much nuance here…. Bjørn is speaking to an external audience. Even in the townhall, it‘s largely the same. Most of the 50K employees are too far removed to dig into the details on this topic:

One one hand, arguably adidas hasn‘t brought an IMPACTFUL innovation to market since boost. For most of the external audience, this would be a reasonable criticism. Of course, the root cause here is that boost had some kind of horizontal strategy. But Kaspar pitted all teams against each other, and this ki-led the chance that good ideas would get very far.

At the same time, there ARE plenty of innovations in the pipeline - but certainly we can argue if they would be impactful…But without the above point sorted, it doesn‘t really matter.

Then, we completely ignore the lifestyle segment when we talk about innovation. We sell FAR more products for sportswear/lifestyle purpose than actual sport. Those BUs also need material and process innovations to excite consumers or improve efficiency. It‘s madness to double down on „credibility“ if it means those innovations need to deliver only for the athlete - we‘re leaving impact on the table.

Bjørn‘s comments have also been directed at GTM strategy…not my area at all…but I can certainly follow the argument. Markets are not incentivized the same way as the BUs.

All of the above can be true at the same time.