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This article originally appeared in the July-August 2002 issue of green@work.
Ever since Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman used a waffle iron to cook up a new sole for a pair of running shoes more than 25 years ago, innovation has been Nike's bread, butter, and glory, the not-very-well-kept secret of the company's enduring success.
Bowerman's waffle sole revolutionized the athletic shoe, bringing energy, creativity and new technology to a field that had been running in place for years. Suddenly, runners everywhere were trading in their worn out flats for fast, light-as-air Nikes. First out of the blocks, Nike never looked back. Several years after the premier of the waffle sole came the famed "Air" cushioning system. First introduced in running shoes, it stormed the basketball shoe market on the wings of Michael Jordan and became a standard of both high performance and street fashion.
Now Nike is applying its innovative spirit to a new standard of performance. In the early 1990s, when Air Jordans were all the rage, a small group of Nike's designers and managers were quietly exploring the idea of sustainable development. Centered in the Nike Environmental Action Team (NEAT), this cadre of pioneers began to study Nike's operations through the emerging lens of sustainability, asking questions that would ultimately transform the company's understanding of itself and its mission. What, they wondered, are the long-term environmental and social impacts of the athletic footwear industry? How does a company with annual revenues in the billions (over $9 billion in 2001) and more than 700 contract factories worldwide profitably integrate ecology and social equity into the way it does business, every day at every le ...