Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How Entrepreneurs Create Disruptive Ideas With Tech | Terry Jones - CEO of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak.com

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Lessons - How Entrepreneurs Create Disruptive Ideas With Tech | Terry Jones - CEO of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak.com · Success Story with Scott Clary

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