Mark Parker Quotes
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Let's start with the athlete, Nike's original and most important collaborator. To us, everything starts with the insight. That's why we work with the deepest roster of athletes, to gain the most profound understanding of what's needed to perform.
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Curiosity is life. Assumption is death.
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One of the challenges of innovation is challenging a set model. A traditional way to manufacture footwear existed for hundreds of years. Now we have a whole new way.
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Our brands - Nike, Converse, Jordan Brand and Hurley - are loved by customers all over the world. But we never take that for granted; we know that every day we have to earn their trust - by serving them completely and adding real value to their lives through products and experiences.
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I think overdesigning comes from a lack of editing. The strongest, most compelling, and most useful things in life are irreducible - love, truth, faith, honor.
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I'm a relentless sketcher. It goes back to how you process the world around you - the whole left-brain, right-brain thing. Some people are data-driven. I've always been more visual.
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I always carry a sketchbook around with me, and I sketch whenever I can... I might be in a financial review and be sketching because I find that I actually listen better when I sketch. Truth be told, there are probably more sketches in my books than there are written notes.
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You don't always have to start over to create an emotional reaction to your product. It's always powerful to deliver a breakthrough, but there's also a true art to making something great even better.
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I ran over 10 years without missing a day, averaging close to 15 miles. I loved being able to run a long distance and get that feeling of strength and exhilaration from being in good shape. There was a meditative quality about it. Almost effortlessness. That's a special feeling.
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The biggest sources of opportunity are collaboration and partnership. And today, with digital communication, there is more of that everywhere. We need to expose ourselves to that as a matter of doing business.
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One way a collaboration can go wrong is if your connection is inauthentic or overly prescriptive.
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I don't like when I say 'honestly' - not to imply that I'm otherwise not honest.
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The psychology of performance in athletic footwear and apparel is very real. Most athletes do not say, 'Just give me what works the best - I don't care what it looks like.' They're very concerned with what it looks like and how it makes them feel.
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I love working with athletes. They're all very demanding.
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There is always an underlying spirit of invention at Nike - we love to create something that has never before existed. And not just new for the sake of new - it has to be better.
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My wife will go, 'You know, you're drawing a shoe right now.' I do that all the time.
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I have sketched since a young age, so there's always been an artistic side, a visual side to my personality.
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I think a really great creative person is almost by nature incredibly curious and digging deeply into cultures and technologies and getting all this input and using it to make things better - basically, creating better solutions.
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One of my biggest sources of angst is having people so comfortable with a formula that works that they are not challenging themselves or their ideas.