Nike’s Road To Integrating Innovation And Sustainability

Nike is a US$19 billion company with brand recognition that ranks up with Coca-Cola, Apple, and Cadbury. With a global following and global demand come enormous responsibility. The company operates and leads within an industry where performance rules, so sustainability intuitively is not a fit. Nevertheless Nike and its VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Hannah Jones, are turning the idea of how to approach sustainability on its head. And with such a strategy, Nike rethinks design, innovation, and progress. To that end, Jones set the tone of GreenBiz’s Innovation Forum this week in San Francisco.

Jones and her team spent 18 months surveying other company’s work on sustainability issues, benchmarked Nike against those firms, and asked professionals a bevy of questions.

Nike’s mission statement is to inspire and innovate on behalf of the athlete. So the sustainability questions for Nike included how to incorporate materials great for performance but that are also regenerative and recyclable; how to transform the supply chain; and finally balance this new mindset with pushing products quickly to market. The cool company in Portland found itself needing to align more closely with agriculture, chemistry, and now must learn from other industries–plus balance a new way of designing and manufacturing products with materials that come from many time zones away.

The task is not easy and is still a learning process. Just start with Nike’s product lines, which are made from about 75,000 different materials. One sneaker could have as many as 300 different components. Its supplier rolodex has at least 2000 companies. And meanwhile you have a consumer base that demands zero compromise on price and performance.

The learning curve is still turning and winding for Nike, but the company has made progress. During last year’s World Cup in South Africa, Nike made waves among football players and fans for its jerseys made out of recycled plastic bottles. Within its industry, Nike has led with efforts such as the Sustainable Clothing Coalition and GreenXchange. Not everyone is happy; the company reduced some of its philanthropic activities in exchange for investing in disruptive technologies that down the road could help build a better, cleaner, and safer planet. But for Nike, creating a company culture where innovation means invention with value has made it a leader not just in Portland and within the apparel industry, but among other industries that are now taking sustainability seriously.

By: lisen

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