1. American business magnate and philanthropist..
Co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc.
NET US$14.4 billion

2. •Phil Knight is the son of "a lawyer turned newspaper publisher", William W.
Knight, and his wife Lota (Hatfield) Knight
•Grew up in Eastmoreland, Portland
•Attended Cleveland High School in Portland.
•Continued his education at the University of Oregon
•He was a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald, and earned a
journalism degree in 1959.
•As a middle-distance runner at the school, his personal best was 4:10 mile,
winning varsity letters for track in 1957, 1958, and 1959.
•In 1977, together with Bill Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, Knight founded an
American running team called Athletics West.
BACKGROUND

3. •Immediately after graduating from Oregon, Knight enlisted in the Army and
served one year on active duty and seven years in the Army Reserve.
• After the year of active duty, he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of
Business.
•In his Small Business class, Knight discovered he was an entrepreneur. Knight
recalls in a Stanford Magazine article.
"That class was an 'aha!' moment ... My lecturer defined the type of person who was an
entrepreneur--and I realized he was talking to me. I remember after saying to myself:
'This is really what I would like to do.' "
BUDDING ENTREPRENEUR

4. •In this class, Knight needed to create a business plan. His paper,
"Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese
Cameras Did to German Cameras?,“
essentially was the premise to his foray into selling running shoes.
•He graduated with a master's degree in business administration from the school
in 1962.
BUDDING ENTREPRENEUR

5. •Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he
made a stop in Kobe, Japan, in November 1962.
•It was there he discovered the Tiger-brand running shoes, manufactured in
Kobe by the Onitsuka Co.
•So impressed with the quality and low cost, Knight made a cold call on Mr.
Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him.
•By the end of the meeting, Knight had secured Tiger distribution rights for the
western United States.
TRIP TO JAPAN

6. •The first Tiger samples would take more than a year to be shipped to Knight,
during which time he found a job as an accountant in Portland.
•When Knight finally received the shoe samples, he mailed two pairs to Bill
Bowerman at the University of Oregon hoping to gain a sale and an influential
endorsement.
•Bowerman not only ordered the Tiger shoes but also offered to become a
partner with Knight and would provide some design ideas for better running
shoes.
•The two men shook hands on a partnership on January 25, 1964, the birth date
of Blue Ribbon Sports, forerunner to Nike.
BILL BOWERMAN

7. • They shook hands to form Blue Ribbon Sports, pledged $500 each and placed
their first order of 300 pairs of shoes in January 1964.
• Knight sold the shoes out of the trunk of his green Plymouth Valiant, while
Bowerman began ripping apart Tiger shoes to see how he could make them
lighter and better, and enlisted his University of Oregon runners to wear-test
his creations. In essence, the foundation for what would become Nike had
been established.
BOWERMAN AND KNIGHT

8. A former University of Oregon track star, Knight founded Blue Ribbon sports in
1964, selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of his car at track meets on
the weekends while teaching accounting at Portland State.
In 1971 he renamed his company Nike after the Greek goddess of Victory and
paid a graphic design student $35 to design the company's iconic swoosh logo.
BLUE RIBBON SPORTS - NIKE

9. • The relationship between BRS and Onitsuka was falling apart. Knight and
Bowerman were ready to make the jump from being a footwear distributor to
designing and manufacturing their own brand of athletic shoes.
• The new Nike line of footwear debuted in 1972, in time for the U.S. Track &
Field Trials, which were held in Eugene, Ore.
• One particular pair of shoes made a very different impression – literally – on
the dozen or so runners who tried them.
• They featured a new innovation that Bowerman drew from his wife’s waffle
iron – an outsole that had waffle-type nubs for traction but were lighter than
traditional training shoes.
FIRST NIKE DESIGN

10. • In 2000, Knight was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for his
Special Contribution to Sports in Oregon.
•He is believed to have contributed approximately $230 million to the University
of Oregon, the majority of which was for athletics.
• On August 18, 2007, Knight announced that he and his wife, Penny, would be
donating an additional $100 million to the University of Oregon Athletics Legacy
Fund.
•This donation is reportedly the largest in the University's history.
PHILANTHROPY

11. •In 2006, Phil Knight donated $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of
Business. He also provided monetary support to his high school alma mater,
Cleveland High School, for its new track, football field, and gymnasium.
•In October 2008, Phil and Penny Knight pledged $100 million to the OHSU
Cancer Institute, the largest gift in the history of Oregon Health & Science
University, renamed Oregon Health Sciences University in 1981. In recognition,
the university renamed the organization the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.
PHILANTHROPY