Sports Dream.

Nike was born in 1970 as the corporate incarnation of an eight-year-old sideline begun by a former track-and-field athlete bored with his work as a certified public accountant (CPA). Philip Knight had been a middle-distance runner at the University of Oregon in the late 1950s. Under the tutelage of his demanding and inspiring coach, William Bowerman, Knight once ran a 4:09 mile, but he realized that while his interests lay in track and field, he did not have the talent to participate in the sport at the national level. He went to graduate business school at Stanford, where for a class assignment he designed a plan to capitalize on his interest in sports. He knew that Japanese running shoes were both superior to and cheaper than the German Adidas shoes that dominated the American market. Knight proposed to import Japanese shoes for sale to American...