People, innovation and fun: Xerox executive discusses leadership and technology
From conducting "dreaming sessions" with customers to hiring a high school student to run errands, Xerox executive Sophie Vandebroek shared professional and personal insights into leadership and technology at a talk Nov. 15.
"You have to create an environment where the researchers and the scientists and all the people working with you have fun," said Vandebroek, Xerox's chief technology officer, as she outlined five basic principles that guide her work and personal interactions.
"It's all about making someone passionate because only if you're passionate do you do really great work."
Her talk, "Xerox Innovation," was part of the "Leadership in a Technological World," lecture series sponsored by Princeton's Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and underwritten by the William Pierson Field Lectureship fund.
In addition to creating an inspiring environment, Vandebroek said she focuses on hiring the best and most diverse group of people and building strong working relationships within the company; listening to customers; supporting open innovation and partnering with outside companies with strong ideas; and looking for opportunity even in the worst of situations.
The principles have all been important as Xerox has executed one of the most dramatic corporate turn-arounds in recent history. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2000 when its current chief executive Anne Mulcahy (who delivered a previous address in the same lecture series) took over. Refocusing its products and level of innovation, the company quickly returned to profitability, going from a loss of $400 million per year to a net income of $1.2 billion. In the last two years, the company refreshed 95 percent of its product line, Vandebroek said.
One major change for the company is its increasing attention to services -- helping customers deal with the volumes of information and paper they produce. The company also continues to develop new products, from a reusable paper that wipes itself clean a couple days after it comes out of a printer to personalized book printing.
In one example of putting her principles into practice, Vandebroek described how the company developed liquid chemical toners to replace dry powder toners that have been used for many years. Although the new product was higher quality, less costly to use and better for the environment, inventing it was only part of the challenge.
"It was very difficult even within the company to commercialize the technology, she said, describing how people were invested in producing and selling powdered toner. "Understanding and having respect for the relationships was the only way this all got resolved." Many products and services grow from and are refined by "dreaming sessions" at which technologists, marketing experts and anthropologists meet to figure out what would be most helpful in real work environments. The sessions involve showing customers nascent technology asking how it might be useful. "If Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse," Vandebroek said. "People don't know the capabilities of future technologies."
Vandebroek also described how she keeps balance in her life especially after the death of her husband 11 years ago, which left her to raise three children by herself. Among her tricks for maximizing her time with her family: automating her grocery list and hiring a high school student to go buy them.
"Life is too short not to have fun in what you do each and every day," she said.
The next event in the lecture series will be a Feb. 7, 2008, lecture by Lynda Clarizio, the president of Advertising.com.