Lessons - How Entrepreneurs Create Disruptive Ideas With Tech | Terry Jones - CEO of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak.com

In this lessons episode, you will explore the key traits that make successful entrepreneurs and leaders thrive, such as curiosity and risk-taking. You'll also discover how companies can foster innovation by embracing failure, moving fast, and eliminating silos. The discussion dives into how businesses can adapt to changing environments, digitization, and the future of work in a post-COVID world. What do you think the personality traits of somebody who steps into that role that allows them to be successful would be, and also to part question, which I don't like doing this, but I'm going to give you the runway, what would be the cultural traits of a company that would also allow that person to succeed? Well, I did, first of all, you said it earlier, curiosity. I think you have to be really curious to be an entrepreneur, because generally, you're putting together, you're not inventing something like fire, you're putting together parts of things that exist in a new way. I mean, travelosity just put an HTML or a paint on a reservation system, but behind the scenes, you know, we had people running computers, printing tickets, we had 3,000 customer service people, it was like a big travel agency, it was just self-service. And that's the brilliance of that kind of idea. I mean, look, Apple didn't invent the music player, then we're MP3 players before, they didn't invent the cell phone, they didn't invent the e-watch, they just made them a lot better. So through curiosity, you can set these goals and say, kind of look what's happening over here, look what's happening over there, why can't we do that? You know, so many companies say, how did they do that? No, it's how did we do that? You know, we have the brand, we have the people, we have the technology, we have the money, we can do that, but big companies look at startups and go, oh, we couldn't do that. So I think you have to be curious, and I think if the team is really critical, we had an interesting band of pirates at the beginning in travelosity who believed in the idea and they were willing to take risks and they knew they would fail, and that was okay, they were going to watch the game films and look at that fumble over and over again and say, how can we avoid fumbling next time? Most people in corporations don't like to take risks, can my book disruption off? I say, look, the number one reason you're getting disrupted is you're not taking risks anymore. Every company was founded by a risk taker, but as we get bigger, it's all quarterly earnings and all we can't fail. If you're not experimenting, you don't fail, you don't move forward. So it's being fearless and learning to kill projects, not people, right? And all Terry's project failed. Ah, that was a lousy project. We're giving him another one, right? And you know, kill the silos in the company, get people to work together and make faster decisions. You know, those kind of things can really change a company, and that happened during COVID. You know, big companies, BPs didn't ask the boss anymore, they just did stuff and move fast. They had to. They had to. They had to move fast. Do it. Yeah, right? So it puts people out of the comfort zone, completely push people out of the comfort zone, COVID of course. But one more thing that you touched on, and I kind of heard it when you said that they put you, you know, in this unit, they separated you, they actually moved you away from the company and any of the, any of the traditional political and the, and the, and the things that would slow you down, they said, for two years, this will figure it out. So they, they were encouraging you to be okay with failure and iterating and trying new things and testing. Yeah. And, and that's something that you mentioned too. That's something that companies had to be okay with during COVID, like it or not. Yeah. I mean, look, there was a major retailer had an 18 month plan to get the curbside delivered. When COVID hit, they did it in two days. Well, the boss won't forget that, right? That's the new ball. Yeah. So that's how people are acting now is just saying, well, let's, let's make decisions faster. Very bear a GM said it. She said, she was thrilled that the speed at which they were able to make decisions, you know, post COVID in my, in my speech, I used the example of a pinball machine, an idea kind of flowing around on the pinball machine. And marketing says, oh, it's a dumb idea. And IT says we can't build the software. The manufacturer says, well, how to build a product and serve says we couldn't fix it. And if you manage to get by all those flippers and the pinball machine, you end up with finance and legal, the biggest flippers of all, right? You're just saying, the idea is dead. And, and you can't do that. The job and a corporation today is to say, yes, not, oh, let's go this means saying no and we'll go back doing more email. It's to say, how do we get that idea over the finish? I heard a great thing the other day, a friend of mine who's a speaker uses the analogy of, of umpires. And he said, he interviewed a bunch of rugby umpires. He said, the rugby umpire is there, yes, to show in fractions, but they're number one goal is to keep the game moving. You know, while still saying, hey, don't do this, don't do that, but keep the game moving. And that's what legal and purchasing have to do instead of saying no, it's like, well, you can't do this, but you can do it that way, right? Instead of just saying no, it's critical to keep things moving. And you know, big corporations have to wake up and do that as part of their digital transformation. That's what you speak about now. And that's what you write about. That's an obviously highly relevant with COVID. So walk me through some of the things you're seeing with companies. What have they done during COVID? Well, how have they pivoted? What has emerged from COVID? Well, you know, what's emerged, I think, is companies realizing that they don't have to do business the old way. I mean, take hotels, for example, they physically had to stop cleaning rungs when people were there. Now they're saying, you know, people really didn't complain much about having their not having their sheets changed every day. They don't do that at home. So now they're not doing room service anymore. I mean, room cleaning anymore to elite. Yes, yes, they're saving a ton of money. Yeah, e-commerce is up 50%. So companies that never looked at it, they're looking at it, O to O online to offline rapidly increasing where I can order online, pick up at the store, or companies laid off in record numbers and hired record numbers. Walmart hired almost a million people. They're five or a thousand people. Excuse me. On the other hand, JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Jake Krueger, are gone. Yeah, Chipotle saw online orders up 50% of profits down. So they're trying to figure out, you know, how do we, how do we do it? In my business to speaking business, I build a studio here. I'm not in it right now, but I have a complete studio with a mixer and all that stuff where I can choose high quality remote speeches. And, you know, other speakers were in their garage going, well, look at my graphics. It means they've changed. meetings are going to be hybrid going forward. Travel has changed. I talked to an executive a huge consulting firm. He had a hundred million dollar travel budget pre-COVID. His post-COVID budget is 50. And he said, we totally re-engineered the business. We've looked at how to change. So people are looking at these new technologies as well, whether it's AI, big data, 3D printing, the internet of things, and saying, we've got to move quickly to digitize our business to manage our customer need and deploy these new technologies to reduce cost dramatically. So when you work with companies, what is the thing that you see having the biggest effect? Like, you look at IoT, you look at AI, you look at companies that are trying to figure it a way to push blockchain into trustless transact. Like, what's the thing that's changing companies the most that you can see the impact in the next six months? Well, I think it's the combination of AI with these technologies. So it's AI and IoT. So you move to manufacturing 4.0, where you can do predictive maintenance. And people who are doing AI and 3D printing, that Boeing just got approved for the first 3D printed, or GE, got approved, excuse me, for the first 3D printed engine part. Think about how that part was made before. Five summer subassemblers made little pieces. They sent them to an assembler, put it together, put it in a warehouse, put it on a ship, put it on truck, and got its GE. Now, GE gets a part that's cheaper, lighter, faster, stronger, and no inventory. And people say, well, 3D printing is slow. It only has to be faster than the ship from Asia, right? And it is. So I think it's the combination of people taking big data and AI and putting it behind whether it's robotics or blockchain or drones to really change products. And the other, I think, big change that you're seeing is cloud-connected products. So companies are seeing that cloud-connected products allow them to act like a web company. In a web company like Travelocity, we knew what every customer was doing every day. We watched every interaction and saved it and improved our product because of it and communicated with the customer. Well, now John Deere has an internet-connected tractor. They don't have to wait for the annual meeting to ask the dealer, well, what are the farmers doing this year? They know every minute and then go out and update that tractor and delight the customer, just like my Tesla. It gets new every month. I get new stuff. And what car ever did that before? So by being cloud-connected, you're a faster learner and you're faster to change to market needs and customer needs. These are all organizational changes now. Take it a level further or a level deeper. Future of work. What are you seeing with companies now? Because now you mentioned a few things. And future of working two ways. Future of work in terms of how people work, but also future of work in terms of what jobs are people going to be doing. Right. Well, and they're both changing. Recent surveys show that most leaders want everyone back in the office, but most workers want a flexible schedule. They like two days in the office and three days in home or something like that. So I think there's going to be a collision here. And I think the workers are going to win because we have great demand for labor right now. And you know, two of the boards I'm on, companies, one company has sold all their real estate and another is sold off half of it already. They're just not planning on coming back because the CFO loves the economics and the productivity is good. Yeah, it depends what business you're in. Obviously, a manufacturing business can't do the same thing. So I think we're going to see much more and continued work from anywhere. And it's going to be part office, part not. I think we have to be careful not to lose the creativity aspect that that evolves from bouncing to other people and talking with them at the water cooler or whatever. And then I think jobs are changing. And we're automating lots of mundane tasks and robotic process automation combined with AI is getting rid of one of those tasks. But on the other hand, we're learning new tasks like a great video salesperson is in terrific demand right now. Somebody you can build a relationship and close deals without ever going there. That's a big new deal. Data analytics is greening off the chart. Anybody can analyze all this big data because some companies have these crystal clear data lakes. But most people have data swamps. And we've got to change that to use these data to great effect. So I think work will change. I think another big thing we haven't talked about is out business models are changing. So kayak is one of those asset list companies that just creates a platform putting buyers and sellers together and is worth $2 billion. But we have other new models like outcomes. So fill up the lighting company. Recently went to skip all airport and Amsterdam said we're not going to say light bulbs anymore. But we want to say light. They said what? So we want to light your airport. We want a 20 year contract to light the airport and they got it. So what do they do? The immediate what does that mean? No, what it just does that example. Yeah. We'll keep your airport lit. We will pay for the power. We'll keep the bulbs there. We'll make sure everything is lit all the time. So you don't have to have people change your bulbs. You don't have to pay for the power. We'll just light the airport. And it's lighting as a service last. So what do they do? They put in bulbs that last 75% longer that they weren't selling before. They put the same bulbs use half the power because Phillips is paying for the power. And they've recycled the bulbs and remanufactured them now because it's in their interest. So they've went from selling bulbs to selling a long term highly profitable contract. And they saved a ton of money for the airport. So Honeywell is doing things like that. GE is selling power by the hour. You know, then we're seeing models like subscriptions for things we never thought we'd subscribe to like dinner. You know, I subscribe to a box meal service or razors. If you decide you'd subscribe to razors, billion dollar business. And then people have gone direct to consumer on crazy things like D to C suitcases and D to C mattresses. Now things we always had to go to the store for now suddenly. We don't. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.