NIKE drives innovation with Sport Offense and 4 new technologies
The brand presents a new collaboration with the Jordan and Converse teams and introduces advanced solutions, from ventilated clothing to neuroscientific and motorized footwear.
Nike continues to lead the way in innovation in technical apparel for athletes with a new strategy called Sport Offense. This latest chapter marks the beginning of a unique collaboration that brings together the innovation, design, and product teams at Nike, Jordan Brand, and Converse into a single creative engine.
The cooperation is designed to share technologies, methods, solutions, and accelerate the exchange of ideas. Phil McCartney, Chief Innovation, Design, and Product Officer at NIKE, says: “Everything begins and ends with the athlete’s voice – their goals, their struggles, their drive. By uniting our creation organization across Nike, Jordan and Converse, we’re accelerating progress and fully leveraging our strengths to deliver epic products that make athletes better. It’s a new day in Innovation, Design and Product at Nike.”
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As part of the Sport Offense strategy, NIKE, also presented four new technologies dedicated to solving athletes’ problems, improving their experience, and promoting the future of sport. After all, the brand’s mission is “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Aero-FIT, Nike Mind, Project Amplify, and Therma-FIT Air Milano are the names of the four new innovations presented. Symbolizing the brand’s highest expression in terms of research and new technologies for various applications, they range from mind science to motorized footwear.
The first is an elite Nike sports garment made from 100% textile waste, capable of channeling more than twice the airflow of the brand’s traditional models to ensure optimal performance in extreme conditions. Aero-FIT is designed to move more air between the skin and fabric, promoting sweat efficiency and helping athletes stay dry. This innovation will make its debut during the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Switching to a different typology of clothing, Nike Mind is a new model of shoe designed to help athletes maintain their mindset before and after competition. The Mind 001 and Mind 002, available from January 2026, are the first Nike shoes based on neuroscience that harness the mind-body connection by activating sensory receptors in the feet. The complex scientific, engineering, and manufacturing technology has been in development for over a decade, and this achievement was made possible by Nike’s Mind Science Department, whose research opens up a whole new category of products and services.
Project Amplify, one of the 4 key innovations introduced through Sport Offense, is the world’s first motorized shoe system, designed to help everyday athletes run and walk with less effort. With a design that enhances the natural movement of the lower leg and ankle, the system helps wearers feel a greater push than with regular shoes. Still in the early stages of testing, Nike is collaborating with robotics partner Dephy to bring the footwear system to a large-scale consumer launch in the coming years.
Unveiled at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics by Team USA, Nike’s Therma-FIT Air Milano jacket features A.I.R. technology, the result of nearly fifty years of innovation, and is the brand’s most technical garment. The lightweight and versatile jacket is adaptive, allowing athletes to adjust the temperature in real time without having to change layers, simply by inflating or deflating the air inside the deflectors. This design was made possible thanks to innovative materials and computational design, also applied to a lightweight hoodie and a down jacket.
These innovations are the result of Sport Offense, the strategy that guides Nike’s vision, as well as the work of nearly 1,000 designers, a dedicated team of bioengineers, neuroscientists, and creatives at the Nike Sport Research Lab, and industry-leading capabilities in footwear and apparel manufacturing, thanks in part to the best manufacturing partners around the world.
“We are a team of dreamers, designers and creators with a responsibility to make athlete dreams real.” says McCartney.
