In a feature story published in the Sept. 24 issue of Forbes, I profile how Intuit has adopted startup-like approaches to developing new product ideas. Here, Intuit CEO Brad Smith lists the four principles he recently shared with the entire company for keeping new ideas flowing at the 30-year-old software maker.
Get people to fall in love with problems, not solutions.
Leadership’s job is to focus people on a grand challenge. It took 20 years for QuickBooks to get 5 million small-business customers. Smith recently challenged the QuickBooks team to double that in 3 years.
Create an environment where people can test their ideas quickly and cheaply.
Intuit gives employees 10% of their hours as unstructured time. The legal department created a tool kit that lets product managers try new business ideas without needing to talk to legal. The IT department accelerated the time it took to set up test environments for new Web products from two months to two hours.
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