ABSTRACT
In 2004, Nike formally integrated corporate responsibility into its business strategy. With such leadership attributes, Nike naturally attracts and retains talented people—employees with a desire to make a difference through learning and action. As part of that evolution, Nike has become more symbiotic, realizing that it is part of a larger web of life on which it totally depends and creating a corporate sense of purpose around that realization. In addition to the symbiotic practices focused on mutual benefit, Nike also employs a commensal form of symbiosis, in which it uses free biospheric resources—wind and solar energy—without creating either mutual benefit or harm to those resources. Nike’s approach to learning was like an athlete preparing for competition: part individual effort, part teamwork, and part expert coaching. A critical part of CEO Mark Parker’s corporate training strategy was to decentralize decision-making, to enable Nike teams to respond more quickly to emerging challenges and opportunities.
