《Business of Fashion》專訪 Nike CEO Mark Parker － 談論創新與公司運營模式

在最新一期「CEO Talk」專訪欄目中，《Business of Fashion》刊登了在 2014 年巴西世界杯期間對 Nike CEO Mark Parker 的採訪內容。在採訪中，這位設計師出身的 CEO 分享了自己在商業與公司運作背後的思維模式，尤其是對於「創新」的理解和實踐過程。 Mark Parker 更是運用了著名建築設計師 Frank Gehry 的一句名言：「源源不斷的創造力需要既定時間表與合理預算的雙重保障」來闡述 Nike 運營模式下的「創新」。此外，這位既可以與華爾街高層高談闊論、又可以與街頭藝術家遊走在大街小巷的 Nike CEO 也針對 Nike 與時尚產業的關聯、Nike 在電子運動市場上的競爭等話題向讀者們透露了一些行業內幕。整個專訪內容現在已可在《Business of Fashion》官網在線閱讀，此外，它也被收錄在了最新出版的 BoF 「Polymaths & Multitaskers」特刊中。

It’s not all that common to have someone with a design background running a massive global corporation. How has this informed the way you manage Nike as a business?

One of Nike’s co-founders, Bill Bowerman, had a great influence on me. He was a sort of mad scientist: an obsessive, compulsive, eccentric inventor. He would cobble up shoes using whatever he had at his disposal. When I came to Nike, I started as a designer. I was a runner and I would modify my shoes to try to make them better, so the fit with Nike was very natural. I’ve carried that through all the many different roles that I’ve had. I’ve probably spent more time on the creative side here, but I’ve always been one of those creative people who is very comfortable in dealing with the other side: the business side, the operational side. And I saw the power of Nike; the potential of Nike was, ‘How do you get those two worlds to connect?’

Deep in the creative world there’s almost this built-in “us and them” mentality. But I could also see the need to have some discipline around what we’re doing to operate a business, particularly at scale, and to edit and make choices and to exercise discipline. I’m always reminded of the Frank Gehry quote, “The greatest source of creativity is a timeline and a budget.” I think there’s some truth to that.

How did this thinking influence the way you shaped the organisation when you became CEO in 2006?

For me, it was always about trying to strengthen the things that made Nike successful and then change the things I thought we would need to change to be a modern, relevant, compelling brand — and a successful business. One of the biggest challenges we have is to make choices. There’s so much opportunity everywhere you turn, so you have to make choices and then you go hard at the things that you decide are really important. Coming into the CEO role, that became even more clear: the need to make choices. Not just choices about what we do or what we don’t do, but what we do and how we accelerate that, how we catalyse creativity around an opportunity.

One of the things I’ve been pushing is the collaborations, the connections with outside people to accelerate the incredible talent we have internally. We have amazing talent within this company, but I think our potential is based on how well we manage that talent and then invite new ideas and creativity and points of view into what we do. I love that.

Can you give me an example?

Oh there are so many. We do it in terms of product, processes, materials, manufacturing, digital… the athletes of course, they’ve always been our main muse and our focus in terms of collaboration. But one that I really like a lot, and maybe it’s dated now, but I still like it a lot, is our work with Marc Newson on the Zvezdochka shoe [named after a Russian dog sent into space in 1961]. We both had a mutual fascination with the space program.

This seemed to be something that the astronauts in the space station might actually use. The whole process of working with Marc was actually really enjoyable. I think the potential of our company is based on the ability to connect and collaborate with smart people in really specific areas.