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👋 Think the swoosh still owns sneaker culture? Revenue dropped $5 billion while you bought Hokas. Now they're betting on robot legs and brain-stimulating footwear. Welcome to panic mode.

Read time: 3 minutes | 679 words

STORY 

⚡ Nike's New Boss Has One Job: Make You Want Nikes Again

You bought retro Jordans. Nike counted the cash. Then you stopped caring.

Six straight quarters of declining revenue. $5 billion vanished. The swoosh became wallpaper. Now they've got a guy who says "create epic shit" in PowerPoint presentations, and he's betting the company on shoes that think.

🧠 The Mandate: Speed Over Perfection

Phil McCartney—51, runner, 30-year Nike veteran—became chief innovation officer in May with a single directive: make stuff worth buying. Fast.

His move? Release products 12 months early. Launch moonshots. Stop overthinking.

The pipeline includes:

• Nike Mind — shoes that claim to calm your brain via pressure points

• Air Milano jacket — inflate/deflate it like a blood pressure cuff to regulate body heat

• Project Amplify — powered robotic footwear that springs you forward with each step

That last one won't hit shelves until 2028. The prototypes look like Terminator legs. McCartney's staff of 4,000+ spends 20% of their time on ideas that'll probably never sell.

"I'd expect a much lower hit rate," he admits.

🏃 The Problem: On and Hoka Ate Their Lunch

While Nike sold vintage Air Max to millennials at StockX prices, actual runners switched brands. On. Hoka. Brooks. Companies that made gear for running, not Instagram.

Revenue collapsed. CEO got replaced. Now new chief Elliott Hill—pulled from retirement—has reshuffled 8,000 employees and fired most of his C-suite.

Bloomberg analyst Poonam Goyal put it plainly: "Should they fail, the turnaround fails."

⚡ The Bet: Gamble on Crazy

You're not buying Nikes right now. McCartney knows it. So he's flooding the zone—robot shoes, brain-calming soles, inflatable jackets.

One will stick. Or none will. Either way, Nike's betting you'll notice them again.

Related: Nike says its first ‘powered footwear’ is like an e-bike for your feet

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INSIGHT + ACTION

🔥 4 Lessons from Nike's Hail Mary

1. Accelerate When You're Losing, Not When You're Winning. Nike spent years milking retro Jordans while On and Hoka stole their runners. Six quarters of revenue declines later, McCartney's releasing products 12 months ahead of schedule. Not because they're ready—because the alternative is irrelevance.

• Action: When market share bleeds, compress your timeline brutally. Cut review cycles. Ship half-baked. Perfectionism is a luxury for category leaders. If you're chasing, speed is the only weapon that matters.

2. Allocate for Failure When Success Isn't Working. McCartney mandates 20% of his 4,000-person staff work on moonshots that "probably won't ever make it to store shelves." Robotic legs. Brain-calming shoes. A jacket you inflate like a beach toy. He expects "a much lower hit rate."

• Action: Reserve budget for ideas with 90%+ failure rates. One breakout pays for nine duds. Playing it safe when safe stopped working is just expensive dying. Gamble visibly. Make failure a KPI.

3. Reorganize Around Customer Jobs, Not Your Competencies. Nike was organized around what they made well—retro lifestyle sneakers. Customers wanted performance gear for actual sports. Hill moved 8,000 employees into sport-specific roles: basketball, running, football.

• Action: Restructure teams around what customers do, not what your org chart says you're good at. Fire the structure that generated declining revenue. Competency is worthless if it's solving yesterday's problem.

4. Replace Leadership That Built the Problem. Hill came out of retirement, fired most of his C-suite, promoted McCartney. The people who greenlit six quarters of retro-sneaker strategy didn't stick around to "learn" from it.

• Action: Don't retrain the architects of failure. Clean house. Bring in people who weren't in the room when the bad decisions got made. Loyalty to individuals costs less than loyalty to a sinking strategy.

Nike proved you can't optimize your way out of irrelevance. McCartney isn't fixing the innovation engine—he's lighting it on fire and hoping something survives. They're not betting on one product. They're betting you'll notice them trying anything again.

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