Papers presented by Eric Hintz since 2019

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"Athletes as Inventor-Entrepreneurs: User Innovation in the Sports Industry"

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In this recent history, I draw on the work of Eric von Hippel to explore the motivations of inventor-entrepreneurs in the sports industry. The paper will present multiple examples of user innovation featured in a forthcoming Smithsonian exhibition and companion book, Inventing for Sports. In The Sources of Innovation (1988), von Hippel rejected the traditional, linear view of corporate R&D and product development. Instead, he found that “lead users”—experts operating at the cutting edge of their disciplines—often became frustrated with the limitations of their field’s existing tools. To compensate, these sophisticated users built improvised solutions that achieved better results. The manufacturers then partnered with the lead users to commercialize their prototypes. The sports industry has long been a fertile sector for user innovation because amateur and elite athletes demand superior performance from their equipment. To illustrate, the paper will describe the innovations of Joe Breeze, who modified standard bicycles to develop the sport of mountain biking in the 1970s. A second case examines how a competitive runner (and von Hippel student) named Doug DeAngelis developed Lynx Systems Developers in the 1990s to provide improved photo-finish cameras and timing solutions for various sports. A third case describes how a frustrated cricket player and computer scientist named Paul Hawkins developed the Hawk-Eye ball-tracking system to aid officiating in tennis, soccer, and dozens of other sports. Overall, this paper will explore who invents for sports and why. It argues that athletes’ frustrations with incumbent technologies motivate “user innovation” and new product development in both competitive and recreational sports. Dear program committee: This individual paper could fit well in a panel on innovation, entrepreneurship, sports, STS, or public history. Thanks for considering! Eric S. Hintz

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

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2022 Mexico City

"Moneyball: The Computational Turn in Professional Sports Management"

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In this recent history, I describe how the embrace of computational analytics has transformed the management of professional sports in the 21st century. Sports analytics encompasses a set of data management technologies and mathematical techniques for interpreting observable statistical data about athletes and game play to help general managers, coaches, and players make better decisions and attain a competitive advantage. General managers use analytical information to evaluate players for drafting, trades, and contract-salary negotiations. Coaches and players use analytics to understand competitors’ tendencies, develop in-game strategies, and identify areas for training and improvement. Essentially, analytics is the application of “scientific management” (Taylor, 1911) to sports. Accordingly, the paper situates the twenty-first century Moneyball phenomenon (Lewis, 2004) in the context of a much longer history. Drawing on published primary sources and contemporary news coverage, I trace the evolution and gradual professionalization of the sports analytics community, which emerged from an eclectic group of postwar operations researchers, hobbyists, and fringe freelance journalists. I argue that the computational turn in professional sports has created competitive advantages for certain teams and directly influenced players’ in-game strategies. Moreover, this analytical turn has initiated a shift in epistemological authority in the front office. As professional teams have learned to “trust in numbers” (Porter, 1996), they have increasingly rejected the traditional expertise of former players and scouts and let the statisticians and “computer boys” take over (Ensmenger, 2012), albeit with predictable resistance. Advocates suggest that analytics have made the games fairer and leveled the playing field for teams with smaller payrolls. Meanwhile, critics suggest that analytics have turned players into automatons and robbed the games of individual creativity and spontaneity. Dear program committee: This individual paper could fit well in a panel on applied management, sports, computing, innovation, or STS. Thanks for considering! Eric S. Hintz

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2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform

"American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D"

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This paper argues that America’s individual inventors have persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions. During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary “garret inventor” as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. Indeed, lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier) and Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Nevertheless, independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation. Focusing on the years from 1890 to 1950, the paper documents how American independent inventors competed (and sometimes partnered) with their corporate rivals; adopted a variety of flexible commercialization strategies; established a series of short-lived professional groups; lobbied for fairer patent laws; and mobilized for two world wars. After 1950, the experiences of independent inventors generally mirrored the patterns of their predecessors and they remained overshadowed during corporate R&D’s postwar golden age. However, the independents enjoyed a resurgence at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Shark Tank’s Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. Drawing on the records of inventors and firms, this paper recovers the stories of a group once considered extinct. It challenges long-held assumptions about the corporatization of invention (Hughes, 1989; Hounshell, 1996) and extends a growing literature that acknowledges the persistent contributions of individual inventors (Lamoreaux-Sokoloff, 1999; Nicholas, 2010).

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