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Mark Parker
The running geek who found his dream job as a Nike shoe designer, then became CEO
Mark Parker recently stepped down as Nike’s CEO after 14 years in the role, during which time sales have grown from $14bn to $45bn, and most impressively market cap has grown from $16bn to $145bn. The average tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO is now less than 5 years.
Parker was the running geek who found his dream job as a shoe designer back in 1979, shortly after Nike had shifted to developing its own branded shoes, rather than importing (Asics) Tiger shoes from Japan.
He stepped into the top job as CEO of the world’s largest sportswear company in 2006, and into the rather big running shoes of founder Phil Knight.
in 2010 Fast Company called Parker “the world’s most creative CEO” and indeed, he has never been a typical corporate executive, as the eclectic collection of objects in his office demonstrated.
His love of art – from Andy Warhol to Adonna Khare – as well as sport were obvious. The track spikes worn by Roger Bannister to break 4 minutes for the mile, sat on his desk alongside sci-fi movie props from Back to the Future and Star Wars, including C3-P0.
Whilst Parker was a quiet and humble type of leader, he continued to focus on design and innovation. In design terms, he has taken the brand into street style as well as sports performance, and embraced sustainable ideas, most notably with lines from Air Max to Free, Fly Knit and Vaporfly.
He also championed digital technologies, including the Nike+ range of services, and a massive shift to direct selling through innovative digital platforms and stores.
Most recently, the Vaporfly running shoe has come under the spotlight for its revolutionary carbon plate embedded inside its midsole, creating a 4-5% performance improvement for athletes. 85% of top finishers in all recent marathons have worn the shoe, and both men’s and women’s world records have been broken in them. Huge debate followed within World Athletics, as to what was fair and not, what constituted reasonable human progress, and what was excessive technological support. They concluded that what is available to buy in stores by anyone, is fair to wear in competition, within some limits. Brands like Adidas and Asics are now in a race to develop similar carbon-plated shoes before the Tokyo Olympics.
John Donahoe, previously boss of Bain & Co, and then of ServiceNow, the cloud computing business, stepped into the top job with a swoosh – while Mark Parker continues as executive chairman.