Phil Knight

Phil Knight appears in Stephen Schwarzman’s What It Takes as a short illustration of hiring for grit. The memoir notes that when Knight was building Nike, he hired other distance runners to work with him — reasoning that whatever they lacked in business knowledge they made up for in stamina: they would never give up, would “take the pain and make it to the end of the race.” Schwarzman uses the anecdote to underscore the book’s talent-and-resilience theme.

Context: Phil Knight co-founded Nike (originally Blue Ribbon Sports) in 1964 with his University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, and he was himself a middle-distance runner under Bowerman. His memoir Shoe Dog recounts the company’s founding.

Where this appears

• What It Takes — cited in the Nike example: hiring fellow distance runners for stamina, illustrating Schwarzman’s emphasis on grit over credentials.