I have been in Nike innovation for over 18 years, almost since its inception. In the beginning it was all about creating amazing product in the spirit of Bill Bowerman that improved athletes performance. The pace was fast, everyone worked hard and respected the discipline and talents of the overall team.
Today what's left of my hair is grey, we fight among our selves to see who gets to show work the MP. We have more VP's that we could ever need and to a person, they are not leading, inspiring to others or even really happy with the work they are doing. Our pace pokes along with no sense of urgency, and work on really stupid stuff like auto lacing, that's not profitable, not performance focused and no consumer really wants or needs.
But because TH wants to do it we convince ourselves that it must be cool and plod along without raising the obvious business questions. As bad as it is in innovation, (and everyone know it's bad, and the work is c-ap) I couldn't believe Nike would sep up another innovation style team that quickly went dysfunctional called Valiant Labs.
We all saw it coming and knew that it would never have a chance to be successful politically or in assets delivery. It died the day it was born, they just don't know it yet. I am deeply saddened by all that has transpired because of politics and basically just mean people that care only about themselves leading the place.
I will be gone soon, my grey hair makes me an age target, but to all of you that will be left behind, what does your future look like? We have slipped so far down the dark hole of infighting that those new to the company have no idea how great Nike once was and with no map or model to follow it doesn't take much imagination to see where things are heading.