Phil Knight - College Years

Undergrad: Journalism
Post-Grad: Business

Knight majored in journalism at the University of Oregon, a decision likely influenced by his father who a newspaper publisher. At Oregon Knight was a member of hte Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, he was also a runner which is where he was introduced to the issues in the athlete footwear market. After a brief stint in the army, Knight enrolled at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At Stanford, Knight had to do a project where he proposed a new business idea with a marketing plan. Knight's idea was to start a company where they would produce superior athletic sportswear for a cheaper price in countries like Japan, an idea which he would pursueafter graduating and would eventually lead to the creation of Nike. Knight's paper was titled "Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Camera Did to German Cameras?"

In an interview later in life Knight discussed this paper and his views on a college education. Knight said, "A college education kind of got a bad rap from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who dropped out after a year and became great successes. But mine was the opposite. I wrote the business plan for the company that ultimately became Nike in a class at Stanford"

Knight's story is very interesting to me. On the surface one could view his journalism undergrad as irrelevant to the success he later had as an entrepreneur, but I disagree with that point. If one looks at Knight and Nike's success it is not a matter of their products being so much more superior than its competitors but rather their success is in the power of their brand. A large part of what journalism students study is communicating a tory and selling it and encaptivating their audience. Not every story which a journalist writes is a ground-brek scoop on the surface but with the right approach and communication skills a great journalist can make any story and ateention grabber. And what is what I think Knight as able to take away from his time in undergrad. He was able to developed the appropriae communication skills to encaptivate an audience with a story much like how the Nike brand encaptivates its audience with its iconic logo and advertisements.

Knight's story is also unique as histime during grad school literally gave birth to what he called "the business plan of Nike". Knight is one of few people who was so passioante about a school project that he pursued it after he graduated and turned it into a multi-billion dollar company. Knight later donated $400 million to his grad school, Stanford. In his commencement speech at Stanford many years later Knight said he was, "Shy, insensure, unsure what [he] wanted to do with [his] life. Two years later [he] left, much better educated. [He] was still shy and insecure but [he] knew what [he] wanted to do, if only [he] could pull it off. And that was to bring to life the plan [he] had written in Frank Shalenberger's entrepreneurship class".