The Corporation

00:50:16,180 --> 00:50:17,380 How much is enough? 980 00:50:17,620 --> 00:50:19,340 If you are a billionaire 981 00:50:19,540 --> 00:50:20,940 would it be okay just to be a half a billionaire? 982 00:50:20,980 --> 00:50:23,780 Wouldn�t it be okay for your company 983 00:50:23,860 --> 00:50:25,140 to make a little less money... 984 00:50:25,300 --> 00:50:27,610 When I bought those two airplane tickets 985 00:50:27,700 --> 00:50:30,850 for Phil Knight and myself to fly to Indonesia 986 00:50:30,860 --> 00:50:34,620 I was prepared for him to say okay lets go. 987 00:50:34,700 --> 00:50:36,340 Oh no not a chance 988 00:50:36,620 --> 00:50:37,180 Not a chance. 989 00:50:37,215 --> 00:50:38,010 No? 990 00:50:38,060 --> 00:50:38,860 They�re transferable. 991 00:50:39,020 --> 00:50:40,090 I can change it to another day. 992 00:50:40,460 --> 00:50:41,315 And call me on it. 993 00:50:41,350 --> 00:50:42,170 Call my bluff. 994 00:50:42,380 --> 00:50:43,305 He�s a smart guy. 995 00:50:43,340 --> 00:50:44,660 I mean he�s not he�s not stupid. 996 00:50:44,780 --> 00:50:46,530 And so I thought okay get ready for this. 997 00:50:46,700 --> 00:50:49,460 Especially because you know I bought first-class tickets. 998 00:50:49,580 --> 00:50:52,500 So you know it would be a comfortable ride at least 999 00:50:52,535 --> 00:50:55,420 you know and of course he tells me then on camera. 1000 00:50:55,820 --> 00:50:58,050 I�ve never been to Indonesia. 1001 00:50:58,140 --> 00:51:00,130 And I�m like taken aback by this. 1002 00:51:00,165 --> 00:51:00,860 I cant believe it. 1003 00:51:01,020 --> 00:51:02,220 The guys the head of the company 1004 00:51:02,460 --> 00:51:04,690 he�s never walked through his own factories. 1005 00:51:04,860 --> 00:51:05,785 Oh you�ve got to go. 1006 00:51:05,820 --> 00:51:08,420 I cant go right now and the rest of this year. 1007 00:51:08,700 --> 00:51:10,780 When we were done filming he calls me up 1008 00:51:10,815 --> 00:51:12,850 a couple of weeks later and he goes 1009 00:51:13,020 --> 00:51:18,050 I may have a chance to go there with you to the factories. 1010 00:51:18,100 --> 00:51:24,100 I�m going to the Australian Open to watch some tennis. 1011 00:51:24,300 --> 00:51:28,770 and uh you know maybe I can get up there 1012 00:51:29,100 --> 00:51:31,865 or at least you can go there. 1013 00:51:31,900 --> 00:51:36,820 Would you like to go to the Australian open? 1014 00:51:36,855 --> 00:51:37,930 For 21years 1015 00:51:38,140 --> 00:51:40,820 I never gave a thought to what we were taking 1016 00:51:41,020 --> 00:51:44,090 from the earth or doing to the earth 1017 00:51:44,260 --> 00:51:46,170 in the making of our products. 1018 00:51:46,180 --> 00:51:49,505 And then in the summer of 1994 1019 00:51:49,540 --> 00:51:51,660 we began to hear questions from our customers 1020 00:51:51,940 --> 00:51:53,260 we had never heard before 1021 00:51:53,380 --> 00:51:56,340 What�s your company doing for the environment? 1022 00:51:56,375 --> 00:51:57,660 And we didn�t have answers. 1023 00:51:58,180 --> 00:52:00,490 The real answer was not very much. 1024 00:52:00,540 --> 00:52:03,220 And it really disturbed many of our people 1025 00:52:03,260 --> 00:52:05,505 not me so much as them 1026 00:52:05,540 --> 00:52:07,500 and a group in our research department 1027 00:52:07,940 --> 00:52:11,170 decided to convene a taskforce 1028 00:52:11,300 --> 00:52:14,020 and bring people from our businesses around the world 1029 00:52:14,100 --> 00:52:15,505 to come together to assess 1030 00:52:15,540 --> 00:52:18,140 our company�s world wide environment position 1031 00:52:18,420 --> 00:52:21,265 to begin to frame answers for those customers. 1032 00:52:21,300 --> 00:52:24,100 They asked me if I would come and speak to that group 1033 00:52:24,660 --> 00:52:26,065 and give them a kick off speech 1034 00:52:26,100 --> 00:52:30,570 and launch this new task force with an environmental vision 1035 00:52:30,605 --> 00:52:33,650 and I didn�t have an environmental vision 1036 00:52:33,780 --> 00:52:36,980 and I did not want to make that speech. 1037 00:52:37,140 --> 00:52:39,660 And at sort of the propitious moment 1038 00:52:40,020 --> 00:52:41,900 this book landed on my desk. 1039 00:52:41,940 --> 00:52:45,180 It was Paul Hawkins book The Ecology of Commerce 1040 00:52:45,215 --> 00:52:48,420 and I began to read The Ecology of Commerce, 1041 00:52:48,660 --> 00:52:50,890 really desperate for inspiration 1042 00:52:51,060 --> 00:52:53,820 and very quickly into that book 1043 00:52:53,940 --> 00:52:57,265 I found the phrase The death of birth. 1044 00:52:57,300 --> 00:53:01,090 It was E. O. Wilson�s expression for species extinction 1045 00:53:01,260 --> 00:53:03,145 The death of birth 10