Nike: Boosting Innovation With Innovation

　　 Nike Group president and CEO Mark Parker (Mark Parker), dressed in a navy blue suit, mixed up with a pair of black Nike shoes on his feet, appeared at the interview site. He likes running and athletics, and he has the lean figure of long distance runners. According to his accompanying staff, "every pair of Nike shoes of Parke is designed and unique by himself."

On this sunny morning, Mark Parker accepted an exclusive interview with reporters as footwear. Designer Parke, who was born, has worked in Nike for years. Up to now, design is still his biggest passion beyond CEO's identity. "My design background is very helpful for me to become a CEO of the company in the future." He told reporters. He believes that Nike is first of all an innovation company. Nike, Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, have been fascinated by Nike's product innovation. "What is really important is to constantly cooperate with athletes and think about how we can innovate. And I think my design background is an opportunity to continue this tradition, and explore the possibility of innovation in a wider range of fields by working with athletes. He said.

To this day, Mark Parker is still involved in two limits with Nike famous designer and Tinker Hatield, vice president of creative concept. product A series of design work. One of the series is Nike spokesperson, Michael Jordan, the "basketball God"; and another series of Teng Yuan Hao is cooperating with "Japan's trend Godfather". Today, the meticulous product development mode advocated by Parke, the so-called "design thinking", is becoming the fashion of the American company.

"Introverted, familiar with design and technology" is the media's description of Parke. Parke did bring this enthusiasm for design and low-key and rigorous personality to the culture and products of Nike group -- just like Nike's slogan "Just Do it" and the slogan "If you have a body you are an are" written on Nike group wall. As long as you own a body, you are a sportsman. You can be conveyed by a sportsman. In the culture of Nike group, technology is not for pure dazzling technology, all technology is centered around "people". It helps people to achieve comfortable and comprehensive protection in the fierce sports.

Innovation drives change

Mark Parker, chief executive of sporting goods giant Nike group, topped the list of annual business figures announced last year by US magazine last year. Since Parke's appointment as Nike group CEO, the company's performance has soared and its share price has increased, far exceeding the growth of the Dow Jones industrial average. Because Nike has more and more influence in the US stock market, the company even becomes a Dow stock. Not long ago, Parke announced the target of Nike's annual income. What is this concept?

After taking office, Parke reorganized the company's business departments according to specific sports items, and changed the brand from the previous sub brand and product based structural mode to a "customer oriented" product category: running, basketball, women training and so on. He said: "in this way, we can ensure that the company's professionalism in every market segment is no longer bulky and the development of the company will not be aimless."

The restructuring department, of course, is not enough to impress Parke. It is worth mentioning that he pushed the innovation brought by Nike to the company. "We use innovative technology to support sustainable development while producing high-performance products for athletes, which is also the source of Nike group's performance growth." Parke told reporters.

The upcoming Rio Olympics is a great opportunity for Nike to show itself. In fact, every Olympic Games is a wave of innovation for Nike. At this year's Innovation Conference in New York, Nike has made many innovations for the Olympic Games and even surpassed the footwear and clothing categories required by the Olympic Games.

Nike HyperAdapt is a good example. This is the first pair of professional sneakers that use Nike's latest technological breakthroughs -- suitable shoelaces. This pair of shoes integrates the deep research results of digitization, electronic engineering and mechanical engineering in order to realize automation. It subverts the traditional concept of fit, bringing the most appropriate solution to the shoelace and tightness of personal preferences. Functional simplification has dispelled the common worries of athletes - the interference caused by the sudden loosening of shoelaces in matches. "When you put on your shoes, your heel will step on a sensor, and the shoelace system will automatically tighten. There are two buttons on the side of the shoe to adjust the tightness, so you can adjust the fit to the best. Parke said. This innovation has solved another long-standing problem of sports equipment: the ability to adjust quickly and slightly. Too tight is too much pressure, too loose, too loose, and shoes may slip. Now you can manually adjust precise and persistent personalized locks during exercise. "In the competition, the feet will suffer considerable pressure, so this progress is enormous." Hatfield said in an interview.

No matter how, innovative designs like this are too numerous to mention in Nike. Soccer shoes with the new Anti-Clog technology and Allyson Felix Zoom Superly Flyknit jointly created by Olympic champion Allyson Felix. It subverts Air Max air cushion structure, remove Nike rubber VaporMax from the rubber sole of the sole, adopts Nike aero series innovation shoes with soft breathable and Flyknit woven materials, Nike shoes and trainers for running shoes, Nike's track and field equipment equipped with new technology, anti running professional running socks, and comprehensive upgrading in January.

These design concepts can not be separated from the good relationship between Nike and athletes. They should listen to the aspirations of athletes and understand how they want to perform at high level events. "We focus on what we can help athletes in high level events." Parke said, "this is a source of inspiration for Nike. It provides a vision to drive the whole process of innovation." This process forms a wave of innovation breakthrough, starting from serving world-class athletes, and then affecting the vast number of consumers. This also explains why you can always see Nike's rounds of product innovation in the Olympic Games or the world cup.

The world's smartest company has been named "the smartest company in the world" by MIT online magazine of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The list is concerned with companies that can take into account technological innovation and efficient business models. Among them, Baidu ranks second in the field of artificial intelligence, such as speech recognition, human-machine interaction, and so on. It is the best Chinese enterprise. The other four Chinese companies listed on the list are HUAWEI, Ali, Tencent and trickle trips.

The magazine reported in the list that Baidu has made remarkable achievements in speech recognition and human-machine interaction. Baidu has released a new generation of deep speech recognition system, Deep Speech, which recognizes accuracy. The system uses end to end deep learning technology, which focuses on improving the accuracy of English speech recognition in noisy environments. In noisy environments, Baidu Deep Speech performs better than Google, Microsoft and Apple's voice system. Baidu is also ambitious for autopilot. Recently, Baidu set up a research and development team in Silicon Valley, focusing on computer vision, robotics and sensors. Baidu driverless vehicle has obvious advantages in environmental awareness, high precision map, location, intelligent decision and control, autonomous learning and so on.

Through continuous layout of AI, big data and other technologies, and in depth integration with traditional industries, Baidu firmly conveys its value proposition of "technology for life" to the outside world. Seeking Alpha, the famous US financial website, said that Baidu is a good long-term investment opportunity, not only because its core search business has a high profit margin and huge traffic volume, but also Baidu's driverless car, Internet finance, education, medical treatment, internationalization and other new businesses have shown a good momentum of development. Piper Jaffray, a well-known investment bank in the US, maintains Baidu's "buy" rating.

In this list, some of the most familiar big companies are on the list, such as Amazon and Alphabet Google, which redefine the industry with digital technology. Some leading companies in their respective fields are working hard to adapt to the rapid technological changes, such as Microsoft's traditional software industry, Bosch Germanic industry, Toyota, Japanese automotive industry and Intel hardware. Of course, you can't ignore those ambitious start-up companies who just joined the list this year. For example, DNA, a andMe testing company for ordinary consumers, is determined to relocate battery technology and take the lead in the Chinese market.

The company is mainly involved in the field of "computer and communication technology". Biotechnology has become the more than 2 largest industry in the list. And last year was also the case. But the two time we have won the list are Illumina, EnliticX gene sequencing, EnliticX software, Intrexon transgenic mosquitoes and CellectisCART therapy.