Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

esoteric

I also liked the idea of a change of scenery. Maybe, I thought, it will initiate a change of luck.

them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull’s-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull’s-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s a law of nature.

Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. Maybe, if I had, I could’ve solved the encrypted code of Matthew Knight.

Denny Strickland, creative director at our advertising agency, had designed a block-lettered NIKE, all caps, and nested it inside a swoosh. We spent days considering it, debating it.

“Normally,” he said, “if one manager at a company can think tactically and strategically, that company has a good future. But boy are you lucky: More than half the Buttfaces think that way!”)

I’d read somewhere that the geese in the rear of the formation, cruising in the backdraft, only have to work 80 percent as hard as the leaders. Every runner understands this. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most.

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.

Blue Ribbon was my third child, my business child, as Sumeragi said, and I simply couldn’t bear the idea of it dying. It has to live, I told myself. It just has to. That’s all I know.

His secret, I think, was that he just didn’t care what he said or how he said it or how it went over. He was totally honest, a radical tactic in any negotiation.