Convergence in the Cloud:

Miriam McLemore: Scott, can you tell us a little about Autodesk’s transition to Cloud and the purpose behind it?

Scott Reese: Sure. It was driven by what we think will help our customers. A quote I love from Bob Johansen is, “The future will reward clarity but punish certainty.” We make the best decisions we can with the information we have so that we can go fast and be agile and then correct over time. We ground everything that we do in what’s good for the customer and make sure that we put their trust ahead of everything. And we were sure we could only give them the products and services they needed from the cloud.

Miriam McLemore: Trust is also core to Amazon and one of our leadership principles.

Scott Reese: Right. And today, cloud is no longer optional. It is required for many companies to survive. And we are not just storing files there. Our customers’ processes are converging, and having the data in the cloud enables us to automate many of those converging workflows.

Miriam McLemore: Tell us more about convergence?

Scott Reese: Construction companies are trying to manufacture large parts of a building offsite, so they want the predictability and the quality that manufacturing companies have had for decades. And manufacturing companies are trying to become more flexible and agile, as construction companies have been for decades. But to practically converge and automate workflows and data, you must be in the Cloud.

Something we can do with workflows and data in the Cloud is generative design, an iterative process of automatically generating options for designers. For example, GM needed a seatbelt bracket for an electric car that was lighter than their existing one, without sacrificing quality or performance. Instead of drawing up what this bracket should look like, they framed the problem, where it mounts, where the seatbelts snap in, and the safety requirements it has to comply with. Our Fusion 360 design tool generated more than 150 different geometric options that satisfied those requirements. The result was a single part that replaced nine and was 40% lighter and 20% stronger than the original.

Miriam McLemore: Would you share some best practices for establishing a vision for your team and making sure that they achieve against it?

Scott Reese: Autodesk has an amazing mission, which is about helping people imagine, design, and make a better world. Recently, we ran a My Why Campaign to help every employee share with the broader population what drives them. For years, my group has helped millions of customers make different elements of the world. Some make buildings, bridges, roads, cars, and robots, but we have customers who are designing nanorobots that travel the bloodstream and fight cancer from inside the body. Others make incubation technology that reduces infant mortality rates by 75% in third-world countries. Some employees are excited about customers designing solutions for sustainability, while others get fired up about helping people make content that their children will watch. As a company, we rally around how our customers leverage cloud and mobile to do amazing things.

Miriam McLemore: Speaking about development, if you think back to the first leadership role that you took on, what’s something you wish you knew then that you know now?