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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS30

Wrong on both counts. Creativity is needed at every step of the idea
development process. Everybody can be creative by combining their
innate intuitive ability with the logical and analytical skills which
education and the workplace tend to favour. And everybody includes
you.

Phil Knight and NIKE – combining logic and
intuition into record-breaking success24

Phil Knight, the co-founder of the NIKE sportswear empire,

exemplifies the benefits of applying a creative approach to every step of
the idea development process by combining logic with intuition.

Hailed by many as the success story of the 1970s, NIKE had achieved
sales close to $700 million by 1982, with NIKE-wearing athletes having
achieved every world record in men’s track events.

A gifted athlete who could run a mile in just 13 seconds over the magic
four minutes, Phil Knight developed his passion and skill for athletics by
running at Oregon State University under the inspired coaching of the
legendary Bill Bowerman. Credited with introducing America to the
jogging craze in the 1960s, Bowerman went on to become coach to the
USA Olympic team in Munich in 1972.

By virtue of studying accountancy at Oregon State University, Knight
might appear to fit the stereotype of the left-brain logical thinker. Knight
had a strong intuitive side, however. Based on his own running
experience, and in the absence of reliable market data, he sensed the
opportunity to import Far Eastern products into the American athletics
market and thereby emulate what had happened in the markets for
cameras and other optical equipment.

The initial business model for what was to become NIKE found
expression in an MBA paper on small business management authored
by Knight, in which he identified the opportunity to source low-cost but
high-quality running shoes from the Far East to compete with the
German-based leader of the American market, Adidas.

It is clear that Knight felt that the original concept was right and was
enormously excited about marketing his own product line, even though
its acceptance in the market was unknown. The NIKE website’s depiction
of this intuitive insight as ‘this you’re-crazy-it-will-never-work-or-