WEBVTT - IBM CEO Arvind Krishna: Creating Smarter Business with AI and Quantum 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.720 Hello, Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and you're listening to Smart 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:08.039 Talks with IBM. This season, we've been bringing you stories 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.559 of how IBM works with its clients to solve complex problems, 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:16.840 like helping Loreel reimagine how scientists approach cosmetic formulation, or 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.960 enabling Scuderia FERRARIHP to connect with fans in new ways. 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.959 But in this episode, we're going to zoom out and 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.040 look at the bigger picture. Earlier this month, I had 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.040 the chance to meet the person who's shaping IBM's future. 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.800 It's CEO and Chairman Arvind Krishna. We sat down in 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:37.080 front of an intimate live audience at IBM's New York 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.920 City office and talked about his uncanny ability to anticipate 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.760 where technology is heading, the future of AI, and his 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:49.120 passion for quantum computing, which he says is as revolutionary 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:54.319 as a semiconductor. Thank you everyone, Thank you Arvin. You're 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.840 a difficult man to schedule for one of these things, 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.320 so we're enormously pleased that you could join us. Start 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:02.880 with a. I have all these cousins, two cousins who 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.360 work for IBM their entire career. I would ask them 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.760 what does IBM do? And they would always give me different, confusing, 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.920 complicated answers. What's your answer, what's your simple answer to 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:14.360 that question. 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:20.200 IBM's role is to help our clients improve their business 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:25.039 by deploying technology. That means you're not ever gated to 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:27.959 one product. It is what makes sense at that time, 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.240 but it is about improving their business, not just giving 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.200 them a commodity. Then to go to the next layer, 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.080 I would say we help them through a mixture of 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.720 hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence and a taste of quantum 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.000 coming down the road is kind of where I would 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:45.759 take it. That's that's what IBM is. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.600 So you are technology agnostic in some sense. 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.640 I'm product agnostic, productnoy I'm not technology agnostic. 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:57.520 Yes, But if I twenty five years from now, IBM 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:02.360 could be doing things that would be unrecognizable to contemporary IBM, 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:03.800 it is completely possible. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:06.720 Yeah, it could be there in twenty five years from now. 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:10.200 The only software IBM does his open source. It could 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.840 be the only computing you do is quantum computers. And 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.600 if I add those two people today say that's not 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:16.440 the IEM of today. 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.360 Is it even simpler to say you just IBM solves 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.120 problems at the highest technical level. 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.440 If you say highest technical level, yesh, Like the guy 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.800 who invented the bar code. He was solving a problem 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.560 retailers wanted to scale. Many of you wy not know 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:34.920 it was an IBM or who invented the bar code, 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:38.320 by the way, not somebody who was a PhD. Not 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.800 somebody who was a deep researcher. I think it was 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:46.919 actually a field engineer. Oh really yeah, And lasers were out, 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.120 and you could use lasers to scan things, but they 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.679 could be upside down, they could be muddy, they could 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:55.880 be partly scraped off. And he came up with the 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:00.720 idea of the bar code and that changed inventory management forever. 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.640 But the world needs to know that IBM invented the Parker. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.440 You guys should do a better job. I'm deciding that. 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.400 I am sure our CMO will listen to this podcast 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:12.760 and we'll get that idea. 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:18.079 Tell me you started at Thomas Watson Research Center. What 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.080 were you doing when you first started it, IBM. 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:26.080 I started in nineteen ninety and that was the era 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:30.120 in which computers and networking but beginning to converge, And 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.880 for the first five years I was actually building networks 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.400 so let's remember this was pre laptops. Laptops came in 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.280 ninety two or ninety three, but it was clear to 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.680 us that they were going to come supportable computing, and 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.760 I spent my first five years building what today you 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.160 would call Wi Fi. We used to have these debates 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.400 can be builded? It's got to be small enough. I mean, like, 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:54.960 it can't be more than one hundred grams was kind 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.480 of our thought, because if it's more than that, you're 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.120 on a three thousand grand laptop. Wold anybody put this on? 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.040 And the debate used to be, why would anybody want 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.160 to walk around untethered? Won't you want to attach a 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.840 big thick cable into it and sit down? Because that 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.640 was the thought, that's how terminals worked. And I spent 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.160 five years having a lot of fun, building many iterations 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:19.760 of those and making progress on that. 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.480 If I had a conversation with your nineteen ninety self 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:28.600 about what the next thirty years were going to look like, 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.600 is it possible to reconstruct what you were What were 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.080 your predictions at that age about where the company, where 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:34.880 the industry was going. 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.440 It was more about where technology was going to go, 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.200 I would say, than where industry would go. I would 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:46.560 have told you that networking and computers would fuse in 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.640 nineteen ninety that was a weird thought that some researchers held. 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.960 By the late nineties, that was obvious that it became 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:58.120 the Internet. I would have told you that I believe 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:00.960 that video streaming will be the prime way people will 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.400 consume video. You would have said that in nineteen ninety. Absolutely, 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.520 Now that didn't take five years. That took twenty. But 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.200 it happened because you could do it technically, except it 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.280 just too expensive and too cumbersome. And if you've been 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:17.719 in technology, like in nineteen eighty five, I would have 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.880 told you the Internet is old because when I went 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.760 to grad school, every one of us had a those days, 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:30.120 an Apple, Mac or Lisa on our desks. They're all 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.120 connected by a network. We're happily sending email to people 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.599 all around the country. We were doing file transfer. So okay, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.320 you had to be a little bit more aware of 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.920 the technology. And it didn't have a browser. That took 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:43.840 ten years to get the browser that took five years 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.440 to be a business. But when you see the speed 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:50.360 and the pace of technology in usually ten or fifteen years, 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.680 the cost point and the consumerization is at a scale 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.240 that you couldn't imagine ten years ago until you've seen 0:05:59.279 --> 0:05:59.960 a few o those sites. 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.919 Wait, did you make the leap to Sorry, this is fascinating, 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:05.880 I'm curious, but how far did you take? That's a 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.240 really fundamental thing you have gotten right in nineteen ninety 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:10.080 I think. 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:15.359 You we were pretty convinced that what we used to 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.839 think of as linear television or broadcast would become digitized. 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.840 That was a given two with cable already the preponderance 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.120 of how people got it that if you put packet 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:32.560 television over cable, then that becomes the way it will go. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.520 I fundamentally believed, actually way back eighty seven, that on 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:41.480 demand movies would become the way people would consume movies. 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:46.000 So those were all things that I could have predicted. 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.240 Nine didn't personally work on all those. I mean, after networking, 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:52.080 I moved on to doing other things. But those were 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:53.520 easy to predict. 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.960 If you had a conversation in those years with someone 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.360 in the television industry and you gave them those predictions, 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:03.520 did they see it? Were they convinced of this? 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.160 I'm actually going to take it back to wireless networking. 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.200 I think One of the reasons I do what I 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.280 do today, which is at the intersection of business and technology, 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.360 is because of what I saw happened with Wi Fi. 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.760 So you build these wireless networks and then you say, hey, 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.600 the market's going to be millions, tens of millions, billions 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.400 of users, and the business looks at it and says, 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:31.760 we think the market is confined to warehouse workers doing inventory. 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:34.120 You can look at them and say, why not people 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:38.680 in their homes because they could imagine outside how people 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:43.880 bought things at that time. And so I became convinced 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.720 that I can't just help invent it. I got to 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.080 think about, now, how do you market it? To whom 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.160 do you market it? What are their routs? How do 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.480 you make it easy enough? And that was probably I mean, 0:07:56.480 --> 0:07:59.080 I'm making it simple now. That was probably a five 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:04.119 to ten year evolution of myself in those days. 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:06.560 You know what this reminds me of when the telephone 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.960 is invented in the eighteen seventies, It doesn't take off 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.480 for forty years because the people running a telephone business 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:14.600 they didn't and they didn't want women using it because 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.880 they were worried that women would gossip with their friends. 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.160 They didn't understand that that's actually what telephone is, right, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:22.000 it's an exact parallel. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.600 Yes it is, you see it again and again. 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.440 What is the source of that blindness? So there's a gap, 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.400 in other words, between the invention, the technological achievement, and 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.280 the social understanding of the technology. Why is there such 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:34.720 a gap? 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:40.320 I think that the gap is fundamental and rooted in 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:46.000 a lot of academic disciplines. So even channeling some of 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:48.040 your work, though you don't intend it to be used 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:49.959 that way, you can say a lot of things that 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:55.040 data driven. If it is data driven, then by definition, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.840 you're looking at history. If you're looking at history, that 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.040 means you're looking at exact buying patterns. If you look 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:06.320 at existing buying patterns, you forget. All of those who 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:10.520 have created massive value in time have all created markets, 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.600 meaning they've all created new markets. And I think that 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.000 is why the world is fascinated with people like Steve Jobs, 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.600 for example, he imagined a market that didn't exist. So 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.400 I think that is the gap. And then if you 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:28.840 can get the technology the business acumen Scaler company and 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:32.240 that imagination of making the market is how you create 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.880 I think massive value. You got to get all three 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:35.440 pieces going. 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.319 It's not enough. In other words, you were thinking, it's 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.839 not enough to invent something new, I need to make 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.360 a business case for it simultaneously, and that that's what 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:44.880 gets you thinking along the path that leads you to 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:45.320 this job. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.120 Oh yeah, I'll tell you if you had met or 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.160 when the nineteen ninety four and you had talked about 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.480 the stock market or about a balance sheet, or looked 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:58.400 at you like, Okay, I got though those words are, 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:00.800 I can parse them. I have no I what they are. 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.560 I have no intuition on what they are. I couldn't 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.800 tell you why it's relevant or why it's not. But 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.920 then you began to think, Okay, why do companies get 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.160 higher values? Okay, that's the stock What does that capture 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.679 if I have to spend working capital and that's the 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.800 balance sheet? Well, so you learn. I mean, I figure, 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.280 I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to read either. The 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.320 best way I read is to go to balance sheets. 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.360 Here you can read the book. It's pretty dawn dry. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.520 Much easier to go talk to a financial expert who's 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.640 around the corner. And people are if you're curious about 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.520 what they do, they're really happy to share their expertise, 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:41.079 and over time you learn more and more and they 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.199 actually become part of your network within the company. And 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.480 that's how you can both learn and evolve yourself and 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.439 actually gain the extra skills you nere. 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.000 To be a successful business leader. Do you have to 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:58.200 unlearn or deviate from some of the things that made 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:00.360 you a successful science. 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.720 I actually believe the exactly opposite. But use what you're 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.360 really good at as a foundation, but don't make it 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.720 the only thing you use. So then how do you 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.480 add the other skills? And there's many ways. You can 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.280 have people that you trust who help you out those skills. 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.599 You can gain some intuition, maybe not the depth of expertise. 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:24.960 I want to be deeper on certain areas of electrical 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.320 engineering than I'm ever going to be, let's say, in 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.720 finance or marketing. But I want to be curious about 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.160 those I don't want to dismiss them. So you build 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.800 on your skills, and then you have to say, but 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.280 I need a complete and holistic view, So I'm going 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.920 to be a little deep, not very deep, in all 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.560 of those. And you've also got to learn to trust 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:46.760 your intuition a little bit. 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.560 Yeah, but I forgot a question that I wanted to 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:54.360 ask about about the predictions of nineteen ninety arvand what 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:55.160 did you get wrong? 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.520 All lots of things. I think that people were thinking 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:04.280 that but in those days, and it started my phrase, 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:06.640 but I'll come back to it. I think most people 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.440 thought that the communication companies would turn out to be 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.839 the winners of how networking got carried. If you all 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.280 think through the nineties of the investments that were being 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:18.920 done by let's not take the names of all of 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:24.439 the telecom carriers. Didn't turn out to be the case. Actually, 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:27.360 I think that's the business model case. The reason is 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:29.959 they all had in their heads that you can charge 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:31.320 people by the minute. 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:34.760 Because they had been doing that already, because. 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.160 They'd been doing that for one hundred years. Yeah, And 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.560 in the end, the winners the networking were those who 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.640 said flat price thirty bucks a month or fifty bucks 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.800 a month or whatever, and that was just too much 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:48.400 of a leap for them. 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.079 I think it's as simples, that is the most parsimonious 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.440 explanation for why you think they failed. 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:56.839 No, there were a couple of other more technical things. 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.719 One was written by somebody who was actually inside one 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.120 of these outcom companies, and he leveled his article the 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:07.000 Rise of the Stupid Network. So telephone people believe that 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.240 the network should be really smart. The end device is dumb. 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.079 If you think about the telephone, telephone is dumb. It 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.560 doesn't actually do anything. It's just about the relays. And 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.079 the network is smart. It routes you, it figures out 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:23.400 where to send it, it does echocaculation backwards. And the 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:25.920 current Internet is completely dumb with the inside. It just 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:27.920 takes the bits and shoves them out the other end. 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.960 All the intelligence is the computer at the end. That's 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.280 probably a bit more of a found explanation, but business 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:35.720 model didn't help them either. 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.000 Yeah. Wait, did nineteen ninety r of End think that 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.400 the network should be dumb or smart? 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.480 I'm not sure I thought about it deeply. But everything 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.640 I worked on the network was dumb. The network movements. 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.680 That's all I did. Yeah, because even I in those 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.959 days understood I couldn't imagine all the applications. So if 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.800 all you do is voice, maybe the network can be smart. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:01.520 But if you're doing all those other things, how could 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.320 the network possibly know all those things that be smart 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:04.600 for it? 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:08.760 Yeah, so you've been COO for five years. 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:09.360 Five years. 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:12.480 Wait, so in your five year increment, what was your 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.360 most misunderstood decision where you ended up being right but 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:17.520 everyone thought you were crazy. 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:22.080 Twenty and eighteen, I proposed to our boat that we 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:26.560 should buy a company called rad Hat. IBM does proprietary, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:30.160 but that was open source. The stock fell fifteen percent 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.640 of the day we announced it, and today most people 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:35.600 will turn around and say, this is the most successful 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:39.320 acquisition that IBM has done in all time, and probably 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:44.080 the most successful software acquisition in history. So it was 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.600 completely misunderstood because people didn't see that you actually did 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:51.960 need a platform that could make you agnostic across multiple 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.280 cloud platforms, across on premise environments. So you've got to 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:58.640 have a view of what it could be, and we 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.440 drove it to a place where I think today it 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:03.320 stands as the leader in its space. 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:07.080 So how did you come to believe this heretical notion? 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:13.680 So Cloud was happening, you could ask yourself the question, 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.720 should we spend a lot of capital and chase Cloud? Okay, 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:23.120 you're five years to be generous, maybe longer behind at 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.520 that point the two leaders, So you could spend maybe 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.520 ten billion a year and a lot of businesses tend 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:32.800 to do that. Okay, it's so important, it's going to 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.320 be half the market. I can't not. My view was 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:38.800 we'll always be five years behind. They're not dumb and 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.440 they're not slow. So if you're going to be there, 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.920 you're going to be best case, a distant third, worst 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:47.000 case maybe a fourth or a fifth. Because there's Chinese 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.600 also in the mix, why would you do that instead? 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.600 Is there a different space you can occupy instead of 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.000 competing with them? Can you become their best partner, in 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.640 which case you write their success. If I want to 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.080 be the best partner, then what are the set of 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.600 technologies that would be useful so you can flip The 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.160 problem is how I thought about it. 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:14.680 How hard was it to convince people needed convincing before 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:16.480 that acquisition. 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:21.920 Probably six to nine months of breaking my head with 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:28.160 no success, and then six months of building the momentum 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.160 once a couple of people began to see it. 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:39.040 Yeah, you're very persistent, Oh yes, very Would you describe 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:40.400 that as you defining trade? 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.600 I am very persistent and I'm very patient. I'm also 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.280 probably very impatient, but I'm not a yeller and screamer. 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.000 I don't rant and rave. But as I say, if 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.400 I think we're going to do something, I can be 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.720 remarkably stubborn about it. We will do it. 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.120 If I got your family, put them up on stage 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:04.800 and asked them this exact question, is this how they 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:05.320 would answer? 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:11.359 As well, they will tell you I'm very stubborn. They 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:13.520 might not agree that I don't try and drave. 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.440 Well, you know, one of the principal observations of psychology 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.960 is that our home self and our work self are uncorrelated. 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.040 Once you know that, you know everything. Wait, I'm curious 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.840 one last question about that. How long does it take 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.720 for you to be vindicated with red Hat? 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:37.679 Probably took five maybe four years, I think by twenty 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.400 twenty three. So twenty eighteen we announced it, we took 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:42.320 the big start crop, it took a year to close 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.719 twenty nineteen, so if our count not that I'm counting 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:56.160 that much, but July ninth, twenty nineteen as the day 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.440 that we got all the approvals. Took another a few 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:02.840 weeks to actually transfer them. But from there, probably twenty 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.119 twenty three, the world woke up and said, hey, you 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.359 guys deserve credit for this was actually a great move, 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:08.600 not a bad move. 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:13.000 Yeah, but this is it's interesting because this is a 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:17.040 real gamble. If it doesn't work, you're not sitting in 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:18.080 this chair right now. Right. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.520 Oh, for sure. There were two steps. One if it 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.720 was obviously not going to work, I wouldn't have been selected. 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:26.680 And two if it hadn't worked after that, that's why 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:28.080 CEOs can be short lived. 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:30.680 Can I ask you, Sif a personal question? How much 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:32.200 sleep did you lose over this. 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.879 Once we had made the decision? None? 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:43.280 Can you give me pointers on how you do this? 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.560 Because I wake up at two am every morning and 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:48.719 I over much more trivial things than this. 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.159 Once a week, I'll probably wake up at two or 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.520 three in the morning. I acknowledge it because I wake 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:56.800 up and my brain is running, and once it's running, 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:58.680 I don't even try to go back to sleep. I mean, okay, 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:01.959 get up and do work and make yourself productive. You're 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:03.919 gonna be tired before in the afternoon. That's fine, you'll 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.080 sleep well that night. I have actually learned a long 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:10.240 time back. You can't do it across. You can't do 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:14.000 it early morning, through the day and late at night. 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:17.000 So an hour before I think I want to go 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.240 to bed, I will actually change what I'm doing, meaning 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:25.320 I will start reading something interesting to me but completely 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.680 outside the scope of work. I may read a biography, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:34.600 I might read somebody who's spontificating on demographics and population. 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.520 But I won't read it on leadership because that's too close. 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:39.920 Now twenty years ago I might have that would have 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:44.080 been different. I won't read it on deep signs because 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:45.840 that's too close to what we do for a living. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.120 So it's got to be outside the things that will 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.800 make my brain churn about work. But it's got to 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:56.439 be something that is dense enough to occupy your brain, 0:19:57.080 --> 0:19:58.360 so it shift gears. 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:00.960 I want to do. It's just for a moment. The 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.080 red hat thing. Was there someone or is there someone 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.640 who you went to and explained the logic of this 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:10.680 and they saw the logic of this, and that made 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:11.560 a big difference to you. 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.919 Getting their support made a big difference. You'd be surprised. 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:23.880 I'm remarkably open inside. I mean, when I have are 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.880 there probably a half dozen to a dozen people inside 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:29.560 that I'll talk to and I'll be completely open about, Hey, 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:31.919 this is what I'm thinking. I don't know. Here are 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:33.879 the risks. I'm open about those Also, it's not just 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.000 the benefits. I think the other risks, but I think 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.840 the benefits outweigh the risks. I talk about that to 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:44.960 people all the time. So whether for example, I mean 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.520 i'll take names. I think our current chro O Nicol 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.360 who introduced us, she has been in that loop since 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:54.719 at least twenty fifteen. For me, if I look at 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:58.080 our CFO Jim Cavanaugh, he's been in that loop probably 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.720 since twenty thirteen. And IBM's will probably wonder, what the 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.080 hell intersection do you guys have? It didn't when I 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.400 talked about learning finance. I will go to him and say, hey, 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:09.760 explain this to me. I don't understand why it's like this, 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.040 And to me it's okay, use a patient, you go learn. 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.000 If I think about many of the people in the 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.720 software business, they've been having these discussions with me for always. 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.959 I mean, now I'll acknowledge I can get probably impatient 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.480 and a servig, but it's meant to be a discussion. 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:31.600 I mean, like, let's have the discussion. If you have 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:33.760 a strong point of view, I got it. Nobody has 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.880 a will be perfectly correct, but I always look for 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.080 if you have a strong point of view. That means 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.040 it's from a different perspective than mine. So what do 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.159 I learn from that? Is the question which helps to 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:50.480 improve my point of view? That makes sense. I actually 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:52.440 think that each person should try to build a community 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.879