The World Wide World: IT Ain't Just the Web ... - Cdn.oreilly.com

home when I was named president of Xerox in May 2000. We were facing the biggest
crisis in our history. The bottom fell out of the economy in Brazil. We uncovered
accounting improprieties in Mexico, with a resulting SEC investigation. We were also
taking on too much change too fast in North America and Europe. The multinational
scope of the crisis compounded its significance. We saw first-hand just how ‘global’
our business had become. Problems spread fast, but solutions take time.”
However, Mulcahy resolutely refused to cut R&D, although, she says, “We did start
thinking in terms of market-ready innovation. We focused on technology platforms.
We launched 40 new products in 2004 alone. Two-thirds of our equipment revenue
comes from products launched over the past two years.”
But innovation is more than just new products. “We were the first to add anthropologists
to our R&D teams. We were also one of the first to really leverage the opportunity
of having an international innovation network, which provides us with a
diversity of new technologies, ideas and perspectives. We have major research labs in
the US, Canada and Europe.”
And finally, she says, “We are no longer a hierarchical company. You can’t maintain
that structure and culture and have the kind of agility required in today’s world. I
very much value the informality and candor that have emerged as a result. We don’t
have a lot of perks. We don’t do as many ex-pat assignments as we used to – mostly
for cost reasons. But we do encourage mobility: Most of our senior managers have
had assignments overseas. The general manager of Xerox Mexico is French. The general
manager of Xerox Turkey is Russian. Our newest US-based brand manager is
moving over from the UK.”
In fact, she concludes, “I absolutely love Xerox culture. It’s one of our greatest – and
most underrated – strengths. It’s what got us through the last few years. Our people
have proven to be not only incredibly dedicated, but also smart and hard-driving
with a realistic but steely optimism.”
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems: Onshore around the world
Jonathan Schwartz got his first job at Sun the hard way: He sold his company to Sun
in 1996. That company, Lighthouse Design, originally built applications for the
NeXT platform and by 1996 it was working extensively with Java. Since then,
Schwartz has toured through numerous roles at the company including M&A, new
10 RELEASE 1.0 WWW.RELEASE1-0.COM