When you’re in the business of product design, it’s temping to focus on making an item “faster, stronger, warmer.” But what happens when a rival comes out with an even “faster, stronger, warmer” version?

“Whoever is faster, stronger, warmer has won,” Dennie Wendt, content director at Nike Center of Design Excellence, said during a presentation this week. “Be in the idea business. It’s bigger than the thing business. Nike is a storytelling company.”

Wendt and Howard Lichter, Nike’s global director of creative outreach, were invited by product design instructors Wilson Smith and Bob Lucas to present “Storytelling Around Product Creation” to students on Monday, March 3, at the White Stag Block in Portland. The presentation was streamed to campus and online.

“The world does not need more objects,” Lichter said. “Students work 400 hours on a product, sweat blood, cut themselves and don’t bother to tell the story behind the item. Tell us your journey, your problems, your roadblocks and solutions.“

Wendt started the talk by focusing on the “secret sauce” of Nike storytelling and how the company brings 600 designers from throughout the world into its culture. 

Photos of Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight and Steve Prefontaine appeared on the screen.

“Nike is very much a product of these three guys,” Wendt said. “Bill is the innovator. Phil busted up reality. Pre was the rebel.”

Every design from Nike should fall into one of those story lines.

Throughout the talk, Wendt and Lichter gave tips to the product design students, such as “You will Fail,” “Maturity is Overrated” and “Don’t wait for the brief.”

“Fifty percent of what we work on is self-generated,” Lichter said. “We talk to athletes, we look for a better way to do something.”

Wendt gave the example of barefoot running. “Through the 90s, we had big, bulky shoes that were inflexible and hard to run in. Barefoot running was becoming a thing, which was potentially bad news for a sneaker company. Our designer talked to athletes and started looking at ways to reengage the muscles of the foot. Shoes became lighter and more flexible.”

Some of Nike’s biggest failures were when designers found a solution that needed a problem, such as Magneto, lightweight sunglasses that attached via an adhesive magnet on each temple.

“At Nike it really is okay to fail,” Lichter said. “It sounds like a cliché, but you really do learn from it.”

- by Heidi Hiaasen, UO Office of Public Affairs Communications, Portland