Growth needs working capital
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Perimeter Books
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Perimeter Books / Business
Shoe Dog
Phil Knight
The Nike co-founder’s memoir of building the company.
2018 · 400 pages · Trade paperback
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Make it part of your reading
7–10 hoursEstimated reading time, at 40–60 pages an hour
Scribner2018 · selected edition
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Inside the book
What you’ll find inside.
Phil Knight tells Nike’s origin story through the uncertainty of trying to build it. Beginning with an idea for importing Japanese running shoes, the memoir follows the relationships, financial pressures, setbacks, and improvisations behind a company that would become globally familiar. Bill Bowerman and the early employees are central to the narrative: their shared commitment to sport helps explain how a business acquired its character. The pleasure of the book is its close view of decisions made before success was assured. It gives readers material for thinking about conviction, cash constraints, partnership, and the personal costs of pursuing an idea for years.
Who it’s for
Founders, sports and brand enthusiasts, and memoir readers interested in the uncertain human experience of building a company.
Ideas to examine
Take these into your reading.
Build shared commitment
Shared commitment to a product and its users can unite people with very different backgrounds and temperaments.
Watch how culture forms
Company culture develops through the behavior of its people, not simply through the founder’s declared intentions.
Keep the uncertainty in view
An origin story is shaped by relationships, improvisation, and narrow escapes as well as deliberate strategy.
Your research notebook
Questions worth keeping.
- At which point does Knight’s persistence seem most justified, and what information might have reasonably persuaded him to stop?
- What does the early team contribute that a founder working alone could not have supplied?
Save this title to add your own notes and reading progress.
The ideas, in conversation
Hear from the author.
Conversations are produced by the linked publishers and may cover the author’s broader work.
Go back to the evidence
Connect the book to your research.
Look past the finished brand and examine the financing, supplier relationships, and operational choices that sustain a business.
A different way into the subject
Continue the conversation.
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