Transcript

Think like a Disrupter | Jon Hirschtick | TEDxBabsonCollege

so I've spent 35 years of my life trying to disrupt a single specific market software market for computer-aided design software or CAD software as we call it I've worked in this field since I was literally a teenager and along the way I've started three different companies in CAD software my first company premise you've probably never heard of my second company SolidWorks I started in 1993 with the goal of disrupting the CAD marketplace in providing a new solution to CAD users around the world and we succeeded in doing it SolidWorks I think truly disrupted the market and over the 20 years almost 20 years I was there SolidWorks rose to have millions of users create billions of dollars in revenue and billions of dollars in value and most importantly I think it have improved the way that millions of products around the world have been designed and manufactured and that's most the most gratifying part of the disruption but after 20 years at SolidWorks I could see that the market was ready for a new generation of disruption and so I left and I started a new company called on shape with the goal to once again disrupt the CAD market and do something good for the design teams of the world this time built on cloud web and mobile technology to respond to the needs of modern product design teams now I'm not sure everyone knows too much about CAD software some of you do and some you don't but you'll you'll kind of infer along the way what it's about so I'm here today to talk to you about how to think like a disruptor to fit the theme of the day of disruption what have I learned in my 35 years in the CAD market about how to think what kinds of thinking processes do disruptors use what have I used and what have the companies the many other companies I've seen I've been a board member and advisor at many other companies and I like you I've observed some of the biggest companies in the world that disrupt markets too and I'm trying to bring all that to bear to inform me this morning in talking to you about what I see as the ingredients to thinking about thinking like a disruptor I'll organize my comments in the three aspects of thinking about disrupter disruption one needs identification how do we find problems and needs in the world to ideas and solutions and three execution because it's not enough to have an idea you have to have to actually go and build it so let's start with needs great disruption solves needs or problems in the world and the thing I want to tell you about needs is they all come from people to see needs and problems in the world you don't look at technology you look at people my father told me as a kid he said John no matter what you do in life you must learn to deal with people and think about people and he was so right because even though so many of the disruptions I've been part of in so many of the ones that you might be thinking about are driven by technology for sure the problems that we solve are always people problems so to think like a disrupter you have to become almost like a radar scanning system of emotions and reactions of people starting with yourself and your own experiences as a consumer of products as a user of services but also observing the other people around you and so my motivation to start SolidWorks was not only about CAD technology or the emerging Windows PC it was also driven most strongly by looking at CAD users I would visit users and I'd see them using the old generation of software and sometimes the users would tell me how happy they were with the software they didn't say they were having problems but I could see the problems they had so consumers users of things sometimes don't even know sometimes they'll complain but sometimes they won't complain they'll just live with the problems they have and talk about a matter of factly a disruptor thinks about those I thought about those I would watch them using the system and they they'd show me how easy something was but it took 21 steps and they had to write down notes on a piece of paper I'm like that's not that easy or they talk about how affordable it was but I could see it cost a lot of money and so I could see in them a need for for software that was easier used that was less expensive and that was really motivating to me in starting SolidWorks with on shape same thing I'd visit 20 years later I was visiting SolidWorks users and I'd see that as teams had become distributed worldwide the old-fashioned Windows software the software I had built 20 years ago was no longer so easy anymore there was constant problems with license codes and installs and service packs and upgrades the expense of the software which twenty years ago it seemed like a like affordable was now very expensive to users and sharing data was really hard they were trying to send files all over the world now something we had never imagined when we built SolidWorks I saw an opportunity to solve these problems but only if we would start from scratch and use the latest in cloud web and mobile technology and that led me to leave SolidWorks and start all over again with on shape you know maybe it may be crazy to try again to disrupt the same market but indeed that's what I'm that's what I'm doing that's what I'm trying to do and we think we're in the middle of disrupting it again at on shape we've gotten a good start and and it's coming along nicely so it starts with user it starts with understanding needs needs you feel yourself and needs you observe and other people in the world second key way you need to think like a disrupter is when it comes to seeing ideas and solutions so you have a feeling for a problem in the world now you have to come up with a solution okay sure we all know to be creative and looking for solutions but I want to talk to you about a few other things one is to be curious in the world be curious about learning about things and what I want to tell you is particularly to learn about things that don't seem to matter okay things that don't seem to be important to any particular problem at hand but just in your gut feel interesting go ahead and spend time learning about them it was key to me in starting SolidWorks that I had spent years prior to SolidWorks playing with playing with windows-based pcs the new Windows operating system in PC and I say playing with because at my business that I was working in an old CAD company I would explain to people how interesting these things were and the PC and Windows and they'd say John why are you playing around with that that stuff doesn't matter in our market you know and what I learned in my own experience is of course it turned out to matter a lot because today almost all professional CAD runs on Windows PCs but at the time in 1993 you know and some of you are some of you weren't even born yet you you you you really this is the advantage of being older by the way when you're older you get what we in the CAD business called a perspective view on things and you can see that just as just as 20 you know 20 years ago people everyone was using UNIX workstations and today you're gonna look at me like UNIX workstations you know what are those you know and someday one of you will be up here giving a talk like this and you say Windows PCs and people go Windows PCs what are those you know and so anyway the point is I was playing around with these Windows PCs a lot of disruptions are a combination of a problem plus a technology that didn't matter until it did okay so Windows PCs didn't matter to the CAD market until it did all right and we see this in in in other stories like like uber which has been mentioned a couple times today you know mobile phones and GPS they didn't matter the taxi industry until they did you know internet search you know an internet search engine that didn't matter to the newspaper business did it until it did so if you worked at a newspaper and you were fooling around with internet search engine people would say why are you doing that well it turns out Google of course redefined the entire market for ads and greatly disrupted not just newspapers but all of ad-based publishing models you see it over and over again with on shape I had spent years before really thinking about starting on shape I spent years experimenting playing around with open source software with web web browser HTML and JavaScript with learning about internet speed why was i learning about internet speed I don't know it didn't seem relevant to the CAD business but I was interested in it okay so don't be afraid to learn about things that don't matter and I encourage all you to go out and pick something that doesn't seem to matter to anything you're doing but just interest you it doesn't have to be technology either you can spend time you know you can go to a crafts fair on Saturday morning and see someone making something and ask them what are you doing what where did that come from what tools are using what's new in your world be naturally curious all the time and you may find that you develop ideas for disruption that involve tying something that doesn't matter to a problem that you see in your world another thing about idea generation that I want to emphasize is don't be afraid of bad ideas too often where we're trying upfront - to think that oh I came up with an idea but it must be really bad I'm looking for the good idea so we think of bad ideas and good ideas as being opposite ends of some spectrum and mediocrity in the middle I'm not implying I'm mediocrity I'm just saying you know what I mean there's kind of natural thinking that a bad idea a good idea I don't see the world that way I think bad ideas live in the same neighborhood as good ideas and they both live very far from mediocrity you know what I mean so like like think of it like a giant hoop earring or something bad ideas and good ideas success and failure are like metastable states that our neighbors from each other and I think some of the worst ideas I've ever had are very close to some of the best ideas who ever had you know and so so get comfortable with brainstorming about lots of ideas and don't worry if they're good or bad some of the great entrepreneurs in history have had a lot of bad ideas Steve Jobs you know who built the great products at Apple he had also built the next computer which many of you have never even heard of go look it up and I heard someone tell me that after next immediately after next he would go lecture at Stanford or something and the students would be very uninterested in almost laughing about what he had done and instead of seeing his obvious grade potential another way to put it is I think visions and hallucinations look the same until you try to build them you know you know I mean things that you you're sure are the way the world is going to be and things that turn out to be mirages they look and feel the same so get comfortable in that zone generating lots of ideas don't worry about deciding upfront which are the good or the bad ones like I say I had a first company that I built and we didn't end up it wasn't a failure but it wasn't a huge success we didn't disrupt the world but the idea looked and felt very similar to the ones for SolidWorks err on shape so don't be afraid of thinking of crazy ideas then finally I want to talk to you about execution too too often people just stop at seeing a problem and thinking of an idea and they don't go and execute to be a disruptor to think like a disrupt a disruptor you have to shift into execution gear which is very different than just thinking about it okay sometimes the the obstacles can appear impossible in starting SolidWorks people told me you're building an entire new CAD system this was excuse me in 1993 and I'm like yeah we're gonna build an entirely new CAD system people thought it was crazy so so what did I do I got started building it you know I didn't have funding yet I went to year with no funding by the way I just built it in my home with some co-founders and we took a step we started we said let's get Windows running let's get some of the basics running let's get a prototype running okay and we started moving we weren't waiting for someone else to do something we weren't finding excuses why not to do it to this day I'm convinced that many other people probably saw the same opportunity for SolidWorks they probably had the same views I did about the Windows PC being the future of CAD but they didn't act on it and the and people say oh you're you're you know you had a great vision for SolidWorks or something I tell people I think the vision was obvious I think if we me and my co-founders get credit it's because we decided to do something about it same with on shake this time around it's a huge job we're undertaking and it takes years as I think Whitney said earlier about how you have to be patient in the early days as he come up that curve you often have to have a lot of perseverance to get through it we did with SolidWorks we did with on shape and now we're getting the rewards of it in the market as people use the product and and tell us great stories about how valuable it is to them this persistence to execute that I've seen in my career and I've seen in other disruptors this ability to stick the stick-to-itiveness to execute that is sort of at odds in some ways with the with the kind of creativity that I just talked about in the idea phase or the radar scanning of the needs and problems identification phase and so to some degree as a disrupter you have to be flexible enough to one day be thinking of wild ideas and user needs and then enter into this long struggle of building your product and it's usually a struggle that's normal it's usually a rollercoaster ride that's normal you know Ben Horowitz who's Marc Andreessen is partner he he talks about this in his book the struggle most entrepreneurs most disruptors go through the struggle know that it's normal when you've done it before you can say it's kind of like being on a thrill ride the first time it's wild the second time you say okay I know I know I'm gonna get a little sick as we go up and down the rise and fall that's normal the other thing I want to tell you about execution is don't worry about being first okay too often we worry oh I don't want to start working on this because because someone else is already doing it don't worry about that look at the great examples in the world like like look at Facebook anyone remember MySpace before it I mean people thought MySpace what's that yeah was the social network but Facebook came up I mentioned Google search but was Google search the first search engine no there was AltaVista which looked like it owned the market the iPod ok the iPod those of you are old enough do you remember before the iPod existed there was the Rio the Rio mp3 player was very popular I mean I know you younger people don't know this but so don't worry you don't have to be the first but you do have to be ok you do have to take a step and execute and I always say if you I can't if you try I can't guarantee that you'll win and be a disrupter but I can guarantee that if you don't try you won't win ok I can guarantee if you don't try to build your disruptive idea you won't build it you won't wake up one morning fire oh I was asleep it doesn't work that way so in closing I'll tell you that I hope I've shared a few lessons a few thoughts about my 35 years in the CAD market and my years of observing other disruptors about finding needs and problems about coming up with ideas and solutions and about then going and executing and it's my sincere hope that that many of you try to execute on your own disruptions in the world and that many of you will probably experience like I did perhaps one that doesn't work out as well but hopefully many of you will experience as I do one that truly does become a disruptive success in the product of you're thinking like a disrupter thank you