Excerpted from a report by Francis Irving, on why Nike hired Ward Cunningham for ambitious open data efforts:

“Why do they want this person? You can piece the broad picture, but not the details, together from the job advert and an article in Forbes.

They’re terrified.

Not terrified of bad PR due to human rights violations like in the 1990s (“Nike suffered from these blows, losing contracts and its good rapport with many consumers“).

Terrified that there won’t be enough water to grow cheap cotton. Terrified that oil prices will continue to shoot up, and they won’t be able to afford international shipping. Terrified that the delicate, beautiful-if-flawed civilisation that we’ve built won’t last in a form where enough people can afford to take part in organised, well equipped sport.

Some of those problems can only be fixed by changing entire supply chains. For example, someone told me that cotton recycling will only work if all their competitors, with whom they share upstream factories, also change to it. Doing that well requires sharing data, and helping others know your data about the scale of the difficulties.

Some of those problems can only be fixed by the invention of new products and services. Startups radically disrupting things – startups that will be more likely the more people understand Nike’s problems.”