Who The F*ck Is Tinker Hatfield?
Posted on September 29, 2008 - Filed Under On Ideation
Tinker Hatfield is a world reknown designer of Nike shoes. In fact, he designed Nike’s first cross trainer. He originally trained as an architect until he applied art & design to create an athletic shoe. He draws his inspiration from everywhere. He has translated museums (Air Max 1), fighter jets (Jordan V) and even lawn mowers (Jordan XI) to create some of the freshest shoes of the time.
He’s now in charge of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen – basically a concept lab where they create products and services that people don’t even know that they need.
Here’s seven buckets of knowledge that he dropped:
- Hatfield doesn’t design in a vacuum — but he also doesn’t listen to focus groups too much. As an innovator trying to do something new, he says he needs to seek the truth and have his info as unedited as possible. “Focus groups are an unreal environment where people are not truly themselves,” he says.
- Instead, he gets out in the field and talks with athletes, gets to know about their needs directly. For example, he cycles with Lance Armstrong, etc.
- “Designing is like competition.” Phil Knight often says that business is like war without the bullets.
- “I’m paid to think outside the box, disrupt, do things other people have never done before. You need to push yourself to find the truth, and go outside normal processes.”
- Hatfield’s secret to getting resources and doing special things: wield clout from the company you keep (ie, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, etc).
- “You may be a business person or a creative person, but when you start to look at issues from a variety of directions, you have an advantage.”
- “When you sit down to create something new, what you do is a combination of everything you’ve done and seen in your life.”
Now this is creativity at its finest.
- Christian
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[...] Tinker Hatfield feels like he designs his best Nike kicks when he’s under pressure. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, because most creative folks are looking to gain more time, more opportunities, more white space. He’s looking for less. He’s trying to design in a constrained box of time. [...]