Inspired by Nike CEO & President Mark Parker’s commitment to making corporate responsibility an integral part of Nike’s mission, Nike’s IT department launched two initiatives. Corporate responsibility is “a design function, a sourcing function, a consumer experience function,” wrote Parker in the FY05-06 Corporate Responsibility Report. And Nike’s IT department wanted to help with that goal.

Forum for a Greener World

In early 2008, Nike’s IT department launched an online forum to help employees connect and share ideas to help reduce the environmental and financial costs associated with its departments. The forum highlights socially responsible IT news, events and projects, including print volume reductions, distance collaboration, and reduced power consumption.

“This forum provides an opportunity for us to get involved in what Nike’s doing across the board,” said Tom Sedory, IT Director of Corporate Responsibility. “We’ve focused on the concepts of operations and technology and how they can play a part in CR because corporate responsibility is a part of how we operate in IT.”

Make Cures Happen

Nike provides equipment, apparel, footwear, money and time to communities and athletes all over the world. Now, Nike’s IT department is harnessing energy to help “Make Cures Happen.”

“When you get in and have your computer on for 8-9 hours a day, you’re only using about 20 percent of the computer’s potential energy,” said Phil Gold, Nike IT communications Manager. “What we’ve done is enable the World Community Grid (WCG) to tap into that 80 percent of unused computer energy.”

The program is simple: Unused Nike computer processing power is donated to a WCG. This processing power is used to assist in medical research, such as finding a cure for cancer or AIDS. By combining millions of online Central Processing Units worldwide to work on extremely large computational projects, these devastating illnesses can help to be addressed in less time for less money. IBM’s WCG currently holds over 326,000 registered user accounts with over 740,000 registered computers. Nike's European headquarters in the Netherlands spearheaded the project, and Nike’s EMEA region alone ranks among the top five corporate users on the WCG.  

The program rolls out to all of Nike’s business regions throughout the remainder of 2008.

“Every second Nike participates, we’re putting the world that much closer to a cure for cancer, AIDS and heart disease,” said Gold.

• Learn more about the process on IBM's WCG Web site.
• Interested in making your home part of the WCG and contributing to the energy used for research? Visit BOINC.