Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

In time we all agreed to pretend it was no big deal. We’d learned a valuable lesson. Don’t put twelve innovations into one shoe. It asks too much of the shoe, to say nothing of the design team. We reminded each other that there was honor in saying, “Back to the drawing board.” We reminded each other of the many waffle irons Bowerman had ruined.

Fail fast.

remembered that the best way to reinforce your knowledge of a subject is to share it, so we both benefited from my transferring everything I knew about Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan to Gorman’s brain.

Johnson was Four Factor, because he tended to exaggerate and therefore everything he said needed to be divided by four.

A soldier in shoes is only a soldier. But in boots he becomes a warrior.

Like me, he read compulsively about war.

It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it—this is how companies die, how ulcers are born.

When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete, and in that convergence, in that transference, is the oneness that the mystics talk about.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.