Nike

Nowhere is this more evident than at the footwear design building at Nike's Beaverton, Oregon headquarters, where Nike fosters a collegial atmosphere. "The building is impressive, there are athletic fields, and it's a work-hard, play-hard environment," said Blair. "We strive to reinforce that through every element of our business." For example, the company hosts twice-yearly design inspiration events -- such as bringing in the manufacturer of a foreign car with a unique design for the team to contemplate. Some interesting, sleek, innovative aspect of that car might find its way into the shoe design. We seek to create the milieu that builds organizational capacity to keep us competitive."

The second leadership principle is that "Nike is not a company; it's a movement, or maybe it's a horse," states Blair, earning puzzled looks from the audience. Nike uses a distributed, non-centralized, collaborative leadership model that celebrates the success of the team. "Leadership is situational," explained Blair, who came to Nike from PepsiCo. "What works in one company doesn't necessarily work in another. When I joined, I was told to do nothing for six months. It wasn't an inactive time. Establishing one's ability to lead is more like riding a horse and less like driving a car. To be effective, a leader must learn how to ride that particular horse and the horse must learn how to be ridden by that particular rider. If one tries to go too far too fast, it's easy to get thrown off. One has to build relationships by understanding what people are trying to accomplish and moving that agenda forward."

Nike's view of itself has served as the basis for an effective marketing strategy: creating product need by promoting athletics as a movement, as a social good. One of the television ads Nike ran 20 years ago was focused not on Nike itself but on the value of athletics to girls and women. In the ad, one girl after another makes a plea (presumably to her parents) that she be...