Who is John Donahoe, the man who made Nike uncool?

Nike’s 48-year success story has been put into question by John Donahoe, its outgoing CEO who knew nothing about Nike or its culture. What mistakes did he make?

Nike CEO John Donahoe during a visit to Nike European Logistics Campus
(Image credit: JONAS ROOSENS/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)

Like Apple, fashion retailer Nike has long been “masterful at making product breakthroughs and engineering cultural movements”, say Kim Bhasin and Lily Meier in Bloomberg Businessweek. It revives a classic design, customers go wild for it and the company monitors product flow carefully, putting enough out to keep the product circulating but still scarce. Last year the firm posted record sales of $50 billion. 

Nike’s 48-year success story has, however, been put into question by “the man who made Nike uncool”, say Bhasin and Meier – none other than the outgoing CEO John Donahoe. Donahoe, now 64, a veteran technology executive and consultant, became boss in 2020, picked by the board of directors to transform the company’s digital strategy. 

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.