Phil knight: The founder of Nike is a genius, visionary, eccentric, mysterious and eccentric ... This is the impression left by Nike founder phil knight. He turned Nike into a symbol of American culture and synonymous with sports marketing, but his leadership style is still a mystery in people's minds. Knight tried to retire three times, but fired his handpicked successor three times. More than 30 years later, Nike is still the battlefield of knights. PhilKnight, the legendary leader of Nike, is the weirdest of the Fortune 500 companies. He always wears sunglasses and shows people as super "cool"; He used to be a long-distance runner, and later started with $65,438+$0,000, creating a sports kingdom of tens of billions of dollars; His company is a famous advertising pioneer, but it bluntly says "I don't believe in advertising"; He is at the forefront of business, but he loves to study Japanese Zen culture and is often lost in thought. He is introverted and not talkative, but he is good at rallying people. Nike is like a happy athletes' club ... phil knight was born on February 24th, 1938. When he was a teenager, he loved sports very much and published an interview article about sports in the high school newspaper. Knight graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor's degree in business administration from 65438 to 0959. At the University of Oregon, Knight was a long-distance runner and set a personal best of 4 points 10 second. From 65438 to 0962, Knight received an MBA from Stanford University. It can be said that Stanford's learning experience changed Knight's life, and he became interested in things other than sports for the first time. It was also in Stanford's small business class that Knight came up with the idea of Nike in the future. After getting his master's degree, Knight went to Japan, and he was immediately fascinated by the exotic oriental culture and business model. Today, Knight's visitors must take off their shoes before entering his office. The knight will clap his hands when the guests leave. A long-distance runner who intends to sell shoes meets a long-distance coach who makes his own running shoes. Strictly speaking, Knight is not a very good athlete, but at the University of Oregon, he met Bill Ballman, a long-distance running coach, who has always been regarded as his lifelong mentor. Ballman later became Knight's business partner. The birth of Nike is like a legend. A college long-distance runner with average grades but interested in selling shoes met a strict long-distance coach who used homemade sneakers to improve the speed of students' long-distance running, and the two collided with each other and had a common spark. They were quite dissatisfied with the existing American running shoes at that time and decided to design their own shoes. Knight once said humorously: "Because I am not the best player in the team, I will naturally test the sneakers designed by the coach (Ballman)." From 65438 to 0964, Knight and Ballman each invested $500 to establish Blue Ribbon Company, the predecessor of Nike. At a shoe fair, Knight met Japanese shoemaker Keisuke Tiger. The shrewd Japanese were overjoyed to see Knight's new sports shoes, and immediately signed a contract with him, which was designed and distributed by the US and made in Japan. A year later, the Japanese side sent 200 pairs of sports shoes, and the company officially started business. At that time, Knight worked as a well-behaved accountant in PricewaterhouseCoopers during the day, and after work, he went to the university campus or sports ground to promote their sports shoes imported from Japan. Until 1969, Knight even worked as a teacher at Portland University. 197 1 year, the sales of blue ribbon company has exceeded 6 million dollars. Ghost Tiger sent someone to the United States and proposed that Ghost Tiger buy 5 1% of the company's shares, occupying two of the five directors. If this requirement is not met, the supply will be stopped immediately. Ballman and Knight couldn't bear to make things difficult for Japanese businessmen and flatly rejected this unreasonable request. With their own design patents, they quickly found a partner, and at the end of this year, Knight named the company Nike after the Greek goddess of victory. Industry "outsourcing", celebrity endorsement, campus-like corporate headquarters, Knight is a talented entrepreneur. As a brilliant entrepreneur and visionary strategist, Knight planned the whole idea of the company from design, technology to marketing with seemingly crazy ideas. Knight was elected as "the most influential person in sports", not only because he founded the number one sporting goods company with annual sales of tens of billions of dollars, but also because he led Nike to widely influence people's sports concepts and healthy lifestyles, and wearing Nike products became a symbol of identity and status. As early as 1970s, Knight designed a virtual production strategy for the company. So far, the company has no factory, but uses its own trademark, design and R&D capabilities to mass-produce in areas with low labor costs by means of special permission, while the company concentrates all resources on studying the needs of athletes, designing products and marketing. Nike's "outsourcing" method of concentrating advantages and saving management costs was later imitated by the industry and even the whole business community. Nike was also the first manufacturer to become famous by celebrity endorsement. 1973, it hired long-distance runner Steve Prifontein to speak for its sports shoes. 1985, Michael Jordan was hired as a spokesperson, which made Nike famous. Only the sneakers named after Jordan earned the company a profit of $2.5 billion. Knight subverted the rules of sports marketing, and now celebrity endorsement has become a classic model of sports marketing. Long before China people expected the birth of a new national hero, Nike had already started to act. In the track and field of the 2004 Greek Olympic Games, at the moment when Liu Xiang became the champion of 1 10 meter hurdles, Nike put a series of new advertisements in the China market. This is the picture on TV: starting line, getting ready for action, legs with Asian skin color ... with a series of starting actions, subtitles are printed: law 1. Are Asian muscles explosive enough? Law two. Can Asians become world sprinters? Law three. Asians lack the motivation to win? Then the camera opens, and Liu Xiang leads all the way, leaving his opponent behind. Subtitle: Laws are meant to be broken. The advertisement was a great success at once. Nike's advertisements have repeatedly become classics in the history of advertising. Knight asked the company's advertising creativity not to resort to products and sales, but to pay attention to spiritual communication with consumers. In more than 30 years of advertising, Nike has become a materialized sports spirit and a symbol of human conquest of nature and transcendence. Nike's "Swoosh" symbol representing speed and victory is also understood as a cultural symbol of the United States. Nike is also different-it is located in Beaverton, Oregon, and its corporate headquarters is called "Nike Campus", which is a paradise created by Knight himself. It's like a campus: there are jogging tracks, lakes and football fields. Office buildings on campus are all named after outstanding athletes, such as Michael Jordan Building, bo jackson Sports Center and so on. The building is decorated with a large number of posters related to Nike and sports, which reminds people of the walls of male dormitories in universities. In Nike campus, everyone has a strong body, and smoking is not allowed here. Knight encourages employees to ride bicycles and roller skates instead of driving. Employees will do two hours of exercise during lunch and work in a brotherly environment. Colleagues drink happily together, talk endlessly about sports, and pretend to be positive anti-traditional figures. Nate wants to create a comfortable and natural working environment. He thinks that the world is chaotic enough and working hours should be as free as at home. It can be said that Nike is a company founded by athletes for their survival. This concept makes a large number of athletes and sports enthusiasts gather around the company, and many retired athletes and coaches become full-time employees of Nike. Even professional players at the peak of their sports career will be fascinated by Nike's campus culture. It is difficult for successful founders to find satisfactory successors. From a small company with a start of $65,438+0,000 to a sporting goods kingdom with a value of $22 billion, Nike is by no means plain sailing. In the past 30 years, Knight retired three times and came back twice to fire his personally appointed successor. It can be said that Knight is the weirdest of the top 500 companies in the world. 1983, Knight traveled long distances to China and gave Nike to Bob Woodall, an old employee. However, a few months later, jogging fever subsided and aerobic exercise rose. Woodall ignored this trend and continued to concentrate on running and basketball. Industry rookie Reebok came from behind, and Nike's turnover dropped by 6%. 1984, Knight returned to the company to regroup, and Woodall and other elders left the company. After that, Nike successfully tapped celebrity endorsements such as Jordan under the leadership of Knight, and then it soared. From 65438 to 0997, Nike has become an industry giant, controlling 40% of the American footwear market. Knight thought it was time to let go, and he appointed tom clarke, who has been engaged in product development for a long time, as the CEO. However, Nike soon hit the rocks again. It didn't notice the decline of American consumers' demand for running shoes above $65,438+000, and people accused the company of sweatshops in Asia. From 1994 to 1997, Nike's sales more than doubled to $9.2 billion, but then stagnated and fell to $9 billion in 2000. 1999, the knight is back. In the following year, he fired Clark, rebuilt a new management team, promoted mark parker and Charlie Danson, who had more than 20 years' experience in Nike, as co-CEOs of Nike brands, recruited talents from outside, strengthened the supply chain system, and added new brands through acquisitions. The company took on a brand new look and moved towards double-digit growth again. However, Nate has always had the idea of retiring. In 200 1 year, he began to entrust a headhunting company to select successors for himself from outside. As a founder who loves his own brand, Knight is cautious about the choice of successors. However, in May 2004, choosing a successor became a top priority: Knight's eldest son Matthew, who worked in a charity, died in a diving accident at the age of 34. This is a heavy blow to Knight, who is nearly seventy years old. According to people around Knight, this incident made him realize that time has passed and life is impermanent. In September of that year, Knight met with William Perez once again and confirmed him as his successor. Perez served as CEO of Johnson Company in the United States. However, in less than 1.5 years, Knight fired Perez in June 2006. He explained the personnel changes on the grounds of poor cultural integration between the two sides, but the deep reason was that a company with a free culture could not stand the orders that Perez tried to execute. After Perez, Knight appointed mark parker, co-president of Nike brand, as CEO, and Charlie Danson, another co-president, as CEO of Nike brand. Choosing the right successor has always been a common challenge for the heads of big companies, but it is more difficult for founders like Knight who have unique personal charm and have taken the company to an unparalleled height in his solo career. Because he has become the soul and spiritual leader of the company, people are used to listening to him, even if he is noncommittal and ambiguous. After many twists and turns in retirement, one thing is certain: the Cavaliers will not completely retire in a short time. He is still the chairman, but choosing a suitable successor is his first task at present.