By then, he was a god among men, at least in that campus. I caught a glimpse of Knight only once – as he walked by with his lunch tray in the cafeteria. Nike was my first “employer” – I interned at their sprawling headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon for two hot summer months in 1994. I have a bit of a personal connection as well. The language is alternately poetic or dramatic as the narrative calls for. It has all the flair and cultivated skill of a well-published author. And the quality of writing – the style and the narrative flow – is absolutely top-notch. And it will be hard to be dry-eyed at the end of the book. As an autobiographical memoir, Phil opens up with extraordinary candour about his personal life as well. Us.”Īnd it’s not a dry business book either. The adage that accompanies the legend is that “The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. The path followed by migrating settlers who moved west in the early 19th century.

The state of Oregon is famous for the trail that it’s named after it – the Oregon trail. It is a tale of dogged perseverance – and Phil alludes to it often in the book – the Oregon spirit. Through it all, they – Phil and his coterie of carefully assembled colleagues – persisted somehow – with a sleight of hand here, a slice of good fortune there, and honest to goodness hard work everywhere – to realize their vision and dreams. From backstabbing partners to disloyal employees to relentless problems with bank and cash flow to lawsuits to fighting government bureaucracy – there is not a stripe of a problem they seem to have quite missed out on. The tribulations that they went through during these years are, at the same time, totally pedestrian and incredibly arduous. It took 18 years to become an overnight success. It captures the period between 1962, when Phil first embarked on the journey (literally, actually), and 1980, when the company went IPO and Phil and his company, finally, made it.

‘Shoe Dog’ chronicles the advent of Nike and the adventures of Phil Knight. Of course, as with the other books I am reading these days, I am wishing this book existed and that I read it, 15 or 20 years ago. In one word, it’s ‘unputdownable’.Ĭhandra, my partner from FundsIndia, gave me the book 2 or 3 years ago and exhorted me to read it, and I’m ashamed that I just got around to it.

I could not, however, hold myself to the target – I finished the 400-page tome in a day and half flat.

Shoe dog review