Phil Knight is a true entrepreneur and ‘Shoe Dog’ is the journey of Nike coasting from one insurmountable challenge to another, as it became larger and larger. Who knew, back in the day, that the perennially illiquid, short-stocked, frequently unbanked and involved in a major legal brawl ‘Blue Ribbon’ would one day become a multi-billion-dollar Nike. It is an interesting story and Phil is a straight-shooting story-teller, never quite couching his thoughts and feelings for the sake of nicety nor shirking away from revealing the dark-side of the journey of entrepreneurship as it took toll on his mental health and personal life – as to how being an always-absent father impacted his relationship with his two sons.
Phil Knight also lived in interesting times: the World War 2 had ended just a few years back when he thought of importing shoes from Japan, the Berlin wall was still up dividing the East and West of Germany at the height of cold war and the Forbidden Kingdom was slowly opening up to the world after years of self-imposed embargo. He lived in an era when history was being made all around him and he gave us a first-person view as to how each of those events shaped his business as he had to change suppliers (from Japan to Taiwan to Korea to ultimately China) or his way of interacting / dealing with people of these different countries (how he felt contrite when he visited Hiroshima, how it impacted on his way of doing business with Asians or when he sought out a meeting with Vietnamese General who single-handedly defeated the US). Phil had a curious mind, and it showed – he transcended bias and did business with so-called “enemy” nations, often much before competition. That flexible bend of mind has to be one of the reasons of success of his company.
‘Shoe Dog’, is also a story of innovation. In a category where major innovation happened couple of centuries back when the cobblers made left- & right-sided shoes – Nike has been a company of many firsts: Waffle sole, Air sole and many more thingamagics that transformed not only Nike’s business but also how the athletes trained and competed in global sports: racing, basketball, football, athletics, and eventually what the general public wore on its feet. It could only happen when a bunch of iconoclastic shoe dogs came together to build a great company. Phil’s flexibility and hands-off management approach also had a desired effect in creating a culture of innovation at Nike, bringing together people of different skill-sets, where they were given freedom to innovate and think on their own.
Only one qualm about the book and I know this is his personality quirk when he is often lost in thought and doesn’t listen to people around him: Phil often side-tracks from his base story. Sometimes he would go on a philosophical bend, other times he would wax paeans of the athletes he has fallen in love with, often meandering down a different path post his stream of consciousness. This was of stitching together two different incidents / episodes often has a disorienting effect on the reader.
But overall, it’s a great book. Inspired.
Alienman 