The Disruptive Process Behind adidas’ Futurecraft M.F.G. (Made For Germany) Innovation

I’ve learnt that opening a can of worms can get very uncomfortable and so it should. My can of worms was an exciting and crazy project to create the first shoe to be made in our industry-changing SPEEDFACTORY. No project I have ever worked on has had such impact on how we work and will work in the future.

As Director of FUTURE Running, I’ve been part of a team working on our new Futurecraft M.F.G. (Made for Germany) shoe and over the past three years I’ve had to get used to very high levels of disruption as we sought to bring the whole production process of a shoe back to Germany, close to our headquarters: a product that would be engineered, tested, manufactured and ultimately made for Germany.

How was I disrupted during this time? Well, I’ve had to get used to pitching something that not even I thought was feasible to achieve. I’ve had to embrace momentum and the scope of a project moving outside one small shoe idea to two factories on two continents. I’ve had to play bad cop on many occasions along the way and burst a lot of bubbles after testing what we believe is the best running shoe we could possibly make.

After a run in the woods for a few hours it’s not easy to go back to the office and break it to the team that we have a performance problem and that the project is on hold until we solve it. At the same time we know that the big D that had invaded all our lives was improving our expertise, and our trust and confidence in each other grew with the challenges we faced.