Nike once pushed new ideas, but now it feels stagnant. I can’t remember the last time something exciting came out, something that wasn’t just a copy-paste of an old product with minor tweaks to justify the “new” tag. It’s ridiculous how complacent the company has become.
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- I’ve seen numerous innovative ideas get ki-led or shelved that competitors eventually launched something similar. Because we weren’t going to make a billion dollars off of. Just remember we turned down basf for “boost” because in initial phases it wouldn’t come in colors.
- There’s a tremendous amount of creative and innovative talent within lbj, Sw, and coming out of vendors we have first right of refusal with their innovations. The democratization of design or design by committee has ki-led a lot of interesting product or tech going to market. Most leaders feel everything has to be a huge win, and has ki-led any thought of creating buzz and innovation in the 10-50k production range.
- There’s a lot of innovation happening in the company…that doesn’t go to market. When the company was growing quickly it was a lot more justifiable to take risks for a big win. Now teams don’t want to take the hit on their BOM cost to give consumers innovation or even something simple. In this environment, getting a higher quality sockliner in our shoes could be considered innovation. Most teams aren’t willing to do it. A lot of those decisions are margin driven, our margin goals are ridiculous and we lose them when we discount product anyways.
When “innovation” is new colors on the same old air technology
Part of this problem stems from the fact that most of innovation hasn’t been held accountable for the last 8 years. I’m hopeful this coming reorg will start to fix it. There’s an entire floor in LBJ that doesn’t do anything but make slide decks on “innovative” ideas and cares more about politics than actually trying things.
As dead as that pound of flesh from JD. The last main line drop that felt new to me was the Epic React Flyknit back in 2018.
Nike had an engaged, creative, and innovative workforce. Threw it away in favor of a return-to-office mandate.
So that's what they have now. Butts reluctantly in seats but disengaged and oppositional.
Yay Nike!
Hey as long as more people with accents get promoted to senior positions does it matter?
It’s because all Nike cares about now is being flashy in the press and then they move on, leaving the consumer behind 🤷♂️
Look at the Nike go flyease shoe, it sounded great, but they barely did anything with the tech once the hype died down