Fieldwork: Discerning the Source of an Organization's Creativity

FIELDWORK: DISCERNING THE SOURCE OF AN ORGANIZATION’S CREATIVITY

Understanding “who we are” raises a practical question: who in the organization can turn a new vision into products and action? In Senge’s Nike example, this meant talking with product designers and product managers.

Once she rediscovered the importance of innovation for Nike, Winslow knew that she “had to go upstream and connect with our designers and product managers.” Nike has about three hundred key designers, so she asked herself, “How could I connect with 20 percent of our most influential designers?” The answer was by going out and talking with them, one by one. “It was very organic: I went knocking on doors. When there was a connection, I just went deeper. The emerging leaders, people who were going to take the idea and run with it, just presented themselves.

“This was very different from other sustainability initiatives. For example, we had a mandate from the Corporate Responsibility team to be ‘PVC-free,’ to get PVCs out of our shoes.13 But that came across as ‘Stop, you can’t do that.’ To designers, this basically closes a door. We wanted to open doors by saying, ‘Think about it this way: there are basically untold opportunities for creating completely new products without compromising performance or aesthetics.’ It took a lot of time, and I didn’t speak to people just once. [I] had to go back and pursue it again. But it was like finding diamonds in the rough—people who were just waiting to have this conversation.

“In these conversations I felt like I was connecting with who Nike really is and what drives this company, the heart of our self-image and the heart of what has made us successful,” says Winslow. “The more I did this, the more I could see that the ideas of zero waste and toxicity were natural goals for us.” At the time of Senge’s account, Nike had not yet “cracked the nut” of embedding sustainability into the business and communicating that to customers, but had made substantial gains. “Over the past five years, we have [developed] long-range sustainability goals of ‘zero waste, zero toxins, 100 percent closed loop’ [all manufacturing by-products and materials in products are either reused or biodegradable] and some new products that actually meet these goals—no glues and cements so you can take it apart at the end of its use, and woven so that we don’t create waste from cutting materials. We have an entire line of organic cotton products [Nike helped create the Organic Cotton Exchange to bring more organic cotton to market worldwide]; an internal sustainable materials group that informs designers about materials choices; and many take-back and recycling initiatives.” The account reports that one of the company’s top three management goals had become “to deliver sustainable products and innovation.” Winslow says, “It’s clear that more and more customers get the story. Who knows, this might be our greatest possibility. When you think about it, Nike is one of the few companies that could make this sustainability stuff ‘cool.’”