David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…The technology that Baumann was experimenting with was crazy stuff. He would rip shoes apart, and he would rebuild them—this is from the Nike website—with snakeskin, deer hide, or fish skin. Goofy and crazy stuff. His guinea pig was Phil Knight because Phil wasn't at the front of the pack, so he could afford to experiment on him. Very fortunate for Phil Knight and his future that he was not the fastest runner on the Oregon team. Exactly. This is where it all comes together. After Phil graduates, he goes to business school right after undergrad to Stanford to Stanford GSB, hence the connection. He graduates from GSB in 1962. It's also crazy. Nike feels like such a modern company. This was a long time ago. In Phil's final term there at Stanford, he takes what is then the only "entrepreneurship course" at GSB. Today, there's a hundred different entrepreneurship courses. Taught by the famous Professor Frank Shallenberger, who Knight gives tons of credit to for Blue Ribbon Sports and ultimately, Nike. In the course for Knight’s final paper, he writes the business plan for Blue Ribbon Sports, pretty much word for word. His thesis is that he knows from growing up with his dad. I think he actually maybe spent some summers at college and then at GSB, working in the newsroom at the Oregon Journal. He knows from the photography department that high-end professional cameras had traditionally been the domain of the Germans. Leica was the most famous camera brand. At this point in time in the 50s and 60s, the Japanese are starting to enter the market. Nikon was the big Japanese entrant. Fuji, Ricoh.…

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