During his speech at Agenda's Emerge conference earlier this year, Hatfield dropped a number of gems, but his main focus was the need for a rich back story to bring a sneaker to life.
"I think that you can design and be crazy, and if you don't have a story, a reason for being, it stays crazy," Tinker Hatfield said.
His penchant for narrative traces back to architecture school when he was pushed to think of not only the buildings, but the people who would be inside of the buildings and how they would interact with them. This attitude paved the way for Hatfield's legendary work with Nike, allowing him to bring inspiration from outside of sports to design a performance sports shoe.
"I don't think anybody thought about being inspired by a building, or a car, or a rock concert, or whatever it is. I think I just came along at the right time," Hatfield said.
