A college basketball player hatched the idea after seeing a discrimination case nearly implode his own team, then wondering why nobody had done anything about it sooner.

Ten years later, that player has developed the idea into a key tool for fixing a sports landscape teeming with cases of sexual abuse, along with examples of racism and sexism in the workplace, discrimination, harassment and doping cheats at virtually every level.

The player, David Chadwick, has transformed his idea into a company called RealResponse, which provides customers — mainly university athletic departments and other sports organizations — technology to give athletes and employees a chance to initiate real-time, anonymous complaints by sending a simple text.