Expanding the Playing Field: Nikes World Shoe Project
World Resources Institute
Sustainable Enterprise Program
A program of the World Resources Institute
Expanding the Playing Field: Nike’s
World Shoe Project
Teaching Note
For more than a decade, WRI's
Sustainable Enterprise Program (SEP) has harnessed the power of business to create profitable solutions to environment and development challenges. BELL, a project of SEP, is focused on working with managers and academics to make companies more competitive by approaching social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs that provide business growth opportunities through entrepreneurship, innovation, and organizational change.
Permission to reprint this case is available at the BELL case store.
Additional information on the Case
Series, BELL, and WRI is available at: www.BELLinnovation.org. Case Overview
Tom Harge’s challenge was to “expand the playing field” in emerging markets with a range of affordable, durable, and easyto-produce sports shoes that could effectively reach the huge untapped segment in “Tier Three” countries. Tom Harge, a 17year Nike veteran who had spent years in the Footwear
Department in the United States, as well as in Latin America, was chosen as the Director of Emerging Market Footwear. His task was to direct and develop the World Shoe Project, Nike’s foray into the bottom of the pyramid.
Two-and-a-half years later, Nike had done just that: developed and produced the World Shoe Series 100 and Series 400, footwear lines manufactured under specific guidelines for emerging economies. By late 2000, Nike had sold roughly 2 million pairs of World Shoes in China, Thailand, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and other Asian and Latin American markets. (This case focuses on the World Shoe in China.) With this project came not only a viable pathway to increased economic growth and sales potential for the company, but also potential for additional jobs in emerging markets and a more environmentally friendly footwear product.
Prior to Tom Hartge’s
Sustainable Enterprise Program
A program of the World Resources Institute
Expanding the Playing Field: Nike’s
World Shoe Project
Teaching Note
For more than a decade, WRI's
Sustainable Enterprise Program (SEP) has harnessed the power of business to create profitable solutions to environment and development challenges. BELL, a project of SEP, is focused on working with managers and academics to make companies more competitive by approaching social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs that provide business growth opportunities through entrepreneurship, innovation, and organizational change.
Permission to reprint this case is available at the BELL case store.
Additional information on the Case
Series, BELL, and WRI is available at: www.BELLinnovation.org. Case Overview
Tom Harge’s challenge was to “expand the playing field” in emerging markets with a range of affordable, durable, and easyto-produce sports shoes that could effectively reach the huge untapped segment in “Tier Three” countries. Tom Harge, a 17year Nike veteran who had spent years in the Footwear
Department in the United States, as well as in Latin America, was chosen as the Director of Emerging Market Footwear. His task was to direct and develop the World Shoe Project, Nike’s foray into the bottom of the pyramid.
Two-and-a-half years later, Nike had done just that: developed and produced the World Shoe Series 100 and Series 400, footwear lines manufactured under specific guidelines for emerging economies. By late 2000, Nike had sold roughly 2 million pairs of World Shoes in China, Thailand, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and other Asian and Latin American markets. (This case focuses on the World Shoe in China.) With this project came not only a viable pathway to increased economic growth and sales potential for the company, but also potential for additional jobs in emerging markets and a more environmentally friendly footwear product.
Prior to Tom Hartge’s