Inspiring Inspiration-Seeking
Did you know that a classic innovation that reinvented the athletic shoe category came from gazing upon a kitchen appliance? Much like Apple's Steve Jobs was inspired by Cuisinart, Nike had its own flash of inspiration - albeit in the grip of a different appliance. The two stories that follow taken from the exceptionally-entertaining, "Shoe Dog," by Nike's creator, Phil Knight.
"Woodell and I pointed out that the outer sole of the training shoe hadn't changed in 50 years. The tread was still just waves or grooves across the bottom of the foot. The Cortez and Boston (two of their early designs) were breakthroughs in cushioning and nylon, revolutionary in upper construction, but there hadn't been a single innovation in outer soles since before the Great Depression. Bowerman nodded. He made a note. He didn't seem all that interested...
"On the two-hour drive back to Eugene, Bowerman mulled what Woodell and I had said, and mulled his problem with the new track (his runners' shoes weren't gripping it right, despite it being a state-of-the-art, world class track), and these two problems simmered and congealed in his thoughts.
"The following Sunday, sitting over breakfast with his wife, Bowerman's gaze drifted to her waffle iron. He noted the waffle iron's gridded pattern. It conformed with a certain pattern in his mind's eye, a pattern he been seeing, or seeking, for months, if not years. He asked Mrs. Bowerman if he could borrow it...
Then follows the amazing story of trial-and-error that accompanied one of the greatest advances in athletics in decades.
"I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs. Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Addison in Midland Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers, that he was making history, remaking an industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop in jump for generations. I wonder if he could conceive in that moment all that he'd done. All that would follow."
What struck me in reading this incredible story was not "what would follow" -- as important as impressive as that was -- but rather, what came before. Where did such a radical insight come from? And, sitting at the breakfast table? I was reminded of another part of the story, this part years earlier, at a dinner with the founder of Onitsuka, who produced the Tiger shoes Knight and Bowerman were importing:
"Mr. Onitsuka Also told Bowerman that the inspiration for the unique souls on Tigers had come to him while eating sushi. Looking down at his wooden platter, at the underside of an octopus his leg, he thought a similar suction cup might work on the soul of a runners flat. Bowerman filed that away. Inspiration, he learned, can come from Quotidien things. Things you might eat. Or find lying around the house," Knight says, with Hemingway-esque foreboding...
What struck me was how Onitsuka's story of being inspired got lodged into Bowerman's mind. And the unexpected source of inspiration created a new possibility. And rather than merely being haphazard, as the story suggests it can be, I believe inspiration is a discipline.
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