READY Read: Five innovation trends shaping global women's sport
READY Read by Lucy Mills
At the IWG Global Summit last week, Professor Fiona Chambers and I turned our keynote into a live futures lab.
Futuring is a practical methodology for making sense of a fast-changing world. It helps us identify opportunities, explore the societal, technological, and ethical implications of change, and make better decisions today.
So we had an idea: what if we applied a futures lens to women’s sport?
One of the foundational practices of futuring is horizon scanning: identifying the emerging signals and patterns that shape future change.
Combining human expertise with artificial intelligence, we scanned the IWG Innovation Track (21 speakers from 14 countries) for early signals of change.
Together, these signals revealed five emerging innovation trends shaping the future of global women’s sport. ⬇️
Five innovation trends at the IWG Global Summit
Trend 1: Visibility → Trust
Visibility in women’s sport is no longer just about being seen; it is about being seen safely, fairly, and accurately. As visibility increases, there is a move towards embedding athlete welfare, threat monitoring, digital safety, and trust-building as core sport infrastructure.
📶 Signals from: Areto Labs and Moonshot.
Trend 2: Participants → Co-creators
The people closest to women’s sport are becoming co-creators, stepping into a whole range of new roles, from archivists and investors to community-builders and storytellers. Together, they are designing and building memory, identity, belonging, and cultural infrastructure that will shape the future of women’s sport.
📶 Signals from: Sport Waikato and UnTold, The House of Women’s Sport.
Trend 3: Programs → Systems
A thriving future for women’s sport depends on changing the systems around participation, leadership, and investment. The question has moved from “What program can we launch?” to “What system keeps reproducing the barriers that make this programme necessary?”
📶 Signals from: African Union Sports Council Region 5 and Education Above All.
Trend 4: Representation → Power
Representation matters, but the conversation has shifted from “we need more women in leadership” to a new frame of “we need to change how power is accessed, held, shared, protected, and passed on.”
📶 Signals from: Hawa Feminist Coalition and Free To Run.
Trend 5: Growth → Regeneration
There’s increasing emphasis on regenerative investment: funding the foundations for the future (e.g. athlete health, safeguarding, data, and facilities) and redefining growth through what we sustain, what we pass forward, and the legacy we leave behind.
📶 Signals from: Reine Collective and Lacuna Sports.
The five trends were our starting point.
The audience selected the innovation trend they believed would have the greatest influence on the future of women’s sport. We turned that trend into a design challenge and used design fiction to imagine a world where that challenge had already been solved.
So… What did we collectively imagine?
Ohh, I’m gonna save that for another edition of the READY Read!
In the meantime, do let me know your reactions to the five innovation trends. And if your organization is interesting in futuring or innovation, schedule a meeting with me.
Thanks for being here.
Until next time,
Lucy
Great job Lucy. Thanks for putting this up