27A- Reading Reflection No. 3


My selection for this reading list was Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight, the CEO and co-founder of Nike. It actually just so happened that my roommate had a copy of the book and lent it to me for this project. Had I known it was in our apartment, I would not have had the other biography express delivered. The read was alright, I knew somewhat the story already of Nike from background knowledge, but what I was really surprised about in the book was the writing. Knight had a tremendous story telling talent in the book, which helped make the read easier. One thing I really admired about Nike’s story was the tenacity through the hardships of the development of the business. Something I was not a fan of was the clear hyperbole of the situations. It makes for a better story, but in order to really learn from the book, I wanted the real lessons, even if they were more plain. Knight’s dealings with failure lent more to the lessons that we are learning in the class, lectures and assignments about how failure can affect the entrepreneur.

               As I stated before, tenacity is one of the biggest competencies and characteristics that I noticed in Knight. He used the small amount of money lent to him to revolutionize sales. His humble beginnings from selling out of his car gave me more of a perspective of how hard it was for a firm to start up in that time.

               The most confusing part of the reading was the timeline of the writing. There were a couple of parts that I noticed that were not in chronological order, not a setback in reading, but slightly confusing when trying to piece together the business’ story.

               Two questions I would ask Knight is if there was ever a mistake he or someone within his top executives made that he thought would be the end of his company, and how he dealt with that mistake. Second, whether he would have changed any major part of his company. As in, sure the swoosh is good, but does he think another logo or slogan could have done better and made the company even more of a success than it is now?

               Knight exhibits all characteristics of a hard worker. He started his business slightly later than current entrepreneurs would have, as well as serving in the military. He went on from that to starting a business at an age (and time) when most people would have been settling down. He was only 24 when he had the idea for the concept of Nike, and it has been his life’s work ever since to grow that idea.

Comments

  1. Gaby VazquezJuly 28, 2019 at 7:02 PM

    Hi Jacob,
    Once again, great job on your post. I also read Shoe Dog, but earlier this semester. It was really interesting to read someone else's interpretation of the book, because I enjoyed reading this book so seeing another person's perspective was really cool. Keep it up!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Connor BrennanJuly 29, 2019 at 11:42 PM

    Hey Jacob, overall great job on the post. Although I've never read Shoe Dog, I think im definitely going to buy it after reading this post. I've basically grown up on Nike my entire life. From the shoes, to long black Nike socks, to Just Do It T-shirts, Nike was huge on me growing up. Keep up the good work and thank you for introducing me to my next read!

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