Jesper Andersen

President & CEO of Infoblox

“I think in leadership, you have to continue to be curious. You have to ask the questions of why things are the way they are and whether they can be done better.”

Summary

In this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan and his good friend Jesper Anderson discuss what makes someone a successful leader, including curiosity and being willing to step up to the plate.

They discuss how growing up in Denmark, a model society for equality and social forwardness, shaped Jesper as an individual and a leader. Jesper spent high school and some of college not knowing what career he wanted to pursue, until stumbling upon technology and software.

He worked at Oracle until his curiosity and love for learning led him to Cisco Systems, where he learned about infrastructure software. Jesper eventually moved on to Infoblox, where he felt he could be the CEO for more than just the sake of being CEO.

Having lived in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, he explains how he is inspired by new ideas, solutions, and young entrepreneurs in the community. Jesper Andersen has been the President and CEO of Infoblox since 2014.

Mentions & Resources in this Episode

• Follow Jesper on Twitter: @jesper2302

• Infoblox NIOS is the world's leading on-premises platform for automating DNS, DHCP and IPAM. Click here to learn more.

• Earthquake in Haiti and help from Cisco – Click here and here to learn more.

• John Chambers – Click here to learn more.

• The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen – Click here to learn more.

• The Internet of Things – Click here to learn more.

Guest Bio

A seasoned networking and software industry executive with a track record of building large businesses, Jesper Is the leader of Infoblox, responsible for the company’s continuing growth and innovation.

Prior to joining Infoblox in December 2014, he served in a number of roles at Cisco Systems, including Senior Vice President For Network Management. Previously, he held senior management positions at Oracle, Peoplesoft, Pivotal Software, and Computer Resources International.

Follow Jesper on LinkedIn and Twitter @jesper2302.

Clips from This Episode

• Insight into how his company is helping to keep its clients' affairs safe & secure throughout COVID-19

• On the future of technology and all that it will be able to help achieve

• "We have to do a better job, in this country, of training & retraining people!"

Episode Transcription

Alan Fleischmann 

Cool. I'm very excited about this, you should know. So, welcome. You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM Radio. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with Jesper Andersen, who is the CEO of Infoblox. And we're going to be talking about a lot of really important things. Here we are in the midst of the pandemic. And everyone is talking about ways to thrive or survive. And we're with someone who's not only a global leader, but actually a thinker and do-er and visionary around technology as we approach the future. Let me tell you a little bit about Jesper, he was born and raised in Denmark, and spent more than 20 years in Silicon Valley at major companies like Cisco and Oracle. And he's made his mark at every step of his career as a disrupter, an innovator in software, and in networking, he'll tell us a little bit about all that. He's also a leader who looks around the corners and builds the kind of culture and the kinds of companies that people are looking for, not only today in this new tech world that we live in, but perhaps more importantly, into tomorrow. And that's what we're really looking for today. As the coronavirus pandemic hits, and people all over the world are starting to work from home, the work that Infoblox is doing has become more essential. The company's secure systems protects users, improves infrastructure, and allows employees to work seamlessly from home. Jesper is was really someone who can tell us a little bit about the future work might look like. And he can tell us a little bit about the future in general. But what I love about talking to you Jesper is that you're also somebody who understands the global nature in which we work, and the importance of community and the importance of culture. So let's start off by talking a little bit about your background. I think of you as a Silicon Valley guy, honestly. I don't think of you as being a guy from Denmark, although you'll hear a little bit of your accent. And I thought maybe it'd be great for our listeners to learn a little bit about your background. Obviously, Danish society has reputation for being very safe, very balanced, very egaltarian, or egalitarian, might be a better way to put it. Individual freedoms are cherished. And there's a very strong sense of community responsibility, which you and I've talked a lot about, of doing the right thing when it's good for public good. In other words, not only be a great company, but be a good one. Not only to be a great citizen, but a good one. Do you feel that growing up in Denmark has influenced your leadership style?

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Alan, on the program as well. I'm excited about it. Yeah, I definitely feel you know, you can—wherever your upbringing is from, you pick certain things of that upbringing. I think the, you know, I'm proud as I look back, even though I've lived outside Denmark for 25 years, I'm proud of the Danish society, the model is definitely a meritocracy, egalitarian society like you said, and that goes all the way back to when I was a kid. We were very much encouraged to ask questions. You know, we were taught to play and innovate through play. And I think, you know, as I have traveled around the world, and I look at societies, that's maybe not always kind of brought forward as much as I think it needs to be. Definitely, I was probably always curious as a kid, but it definitely made me even more curious. And I think in leadership, you have to continue to be curious. You have to ask the questions of why things are the way they are and whether they can be done better. And I was certainly always brought up to do that. The other side of Danish society, there's so many firsts in Danish society. You know, we focus a lot of Infoblox, and thankfully in society globally, today, on diversity and giving everyone equal rights. And that's the way it's been in Denmark for as long as I can remember. Denmark was the first country in the world to give same-sex marriages the same rights as everyone else. That happened all the way back in 1989. If you think about that, that's a long time ago. And so there are many things of that society kind of model that I'm proud of, and definitely helped shape the way I am as an individual and as a leader today.

Alan Fleischmann 

And do you have family still in Denmark? Did you grow up in a big family?

Jesper Andersen 

No, I have a brother. And he still lives in Denmark. My parents passed away a long time ago, but I'm still reasonably close to my brother. And definitely these pandemic days, you know, a little more zoom and FaceTime than maybe we did before.

Alan Fleischmann 

You know, when you think of Danish society and Danish leadership, including the king of Denmark in history, you think of compassion, and empathy that and certainly courage in a lot of cases. So I imagine that's part of where you kind of, in the DNA of where you grew up.

Jesper Andersen 

That's right. Although for most of my upbringing, it's been the queen of Denmark. Queen Margrethe has been there for a very long time now since I was a young boy. So she's done a great job and been a great advocate of Denmark as well, you know.

Alan Fleischmann 

I was thinking the world war two time and before, but yeah, that's exactly right. So tell us a little bit about your leadership journey. I mean, you've had a number of very significant roles, you're at Cisco, where you manage a team of more than 1000 people and developed the Cisco Prime portfolio. And then at Oracle, you were a top officer there. In charge, I guess, of application strategy. Tell us a little bit about what these things mean, actually, and how did you come to be and what did you do in these two places. And both of them have kind of jumped a little bit into what you're doing now. So one of my goals here is you do a beautiful job of explaining some of the more technical things in life, and letting people understand why it's valid, and frankly, so significant to their day to day even, we're talking about people working from home, or even you and me right now and Zoom you know, you've kind of been part of that infrastructure that allows us to do this along your journey.

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, I started my career as a software developer. So you know, for the longest time when I finished high school, and even when I went to college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, to be honest. And then I somehow sort of stumbled across technology and software in particular, and just fell instantly in love. And that's definitely been a love affair my entire career. I wish I could tell you that I, 30 plus years ago, saw the light and knew that software was going to eat the world, to quote Marc Andreessen. I'm not that smart, but I kind of locked into it. And I'm just so thankful that I picked that path. When I came to the United States, I worked for a Danish company and spent some time there, sort of in management of software development director and you know, in the late 90s, I joined Oracle Corporation as a development director and kind of rose the ranks there from a management perspective.  I loved working at Oracle Back then. I mean, I was surrounded by so many smart people and that's always been really inspiring to me. When I have opportunities to be with people that I think are smarter than me, that really inspires me. I love learning. And I just—I was blown away, to be honest,  by how smart these people were. But I think I did a pretty decent job doing my job and adding value and sort of rose up through the ranks of Oracle and various levels of management, primarily on the application software side, like you said. And then in 2008, I kind of wanted to do something a little different. And since I've spent most of my career on the application software side, I thought it was interesting, when Cisco calls me to join Cisco Systems. Cisco has a great reputation as a company, and I really didn't know anything about networking. So it was a chance for me to get to learn a lot more about networking, and really infrastructure, and infrastructure software in particular. And I spent five great years there. Like you've said, initially managing the network management portfolio group, and then eventually I was asked to run the service, quite a video business. And that was a very large business, it was over $5 billion of revenue on an annual basis when I left, and at one point in time, I had like 8500 people around the world. So it was an interesting challenge. I learned a lot.

Alan Fleischmann 

And when you compare the differences between Cisco and Oracle, as cultures, I'm just curious.

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, you and I have spent a bit of time talking about cultures in the past. I always think about culture, as you know, a set of characteristics that you are fixed to some kind of culture, obviously, the way you perceive culture is always going to be a little different from how I perceive culture. But if both of us were asked to describe the culture of the United States, we would probably have some common denominators. And there'll be some things that you'd focus on that'd be a little different from mine. But both are cultures with very, very smart people, hard-driven companies that drive very hard. I would say that I felt that Cisco is a bit of a warmer culture, I think it goes out of its way a little bit more to do things for society and do the things that are right, certainly felt that way to me. There, you know, the Cisco employees are encouraged to care for each other and for society. I remember when I had only been there a few months, there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti if you remember that. Lots of people died. Infrastructure was just destroyed. And without anyone asking the employees at Cisco, even in my team, people got together over the weekend to try to get all the infrastructural networking gear we could from our laps that we didn't strictly need. And people don't know that. But Cisco actually rebuilt a lot of the networking infrastructure in Haiti, free of charge. No one asked anyone to pay, they just did it because it was the right thing to do. And so that speaks volumes about the culture at Cisco. It's not that Oracle hasn't done positive things either. But I felt it more acutely when I was at Cisco, and I still have deep respect for Cisco as a company and you see it again, now in the  COVID 19 pandemic, the company does what's right.

Alan Fleischmann 

It's amazing. I didn't think of it until you just said it. But when you do think of Cisco and a lot of great kind of bold initiatives that exist in civil society, often they're at the table, you know, offering up, you know, whatever they can do, both in their CEO and their leadership, but also in offering up services and talent. I'm curious, as you were in Cisco and Oracle. Were there certain role models that you could—that you drew from that kind of influenced you as a leader? And then also, were there mentors along the way, probably going back to Denmark onward, but who, had they not kind of steered you in the right way, you may have taken a very different direction as a leader.

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah. I feel like I've been very fortunate, especially now that I'm a CEO and having seen some of the very best and legendary CEOs and work. You know, at Oracle, a lot has been written and said about Larry Ellison. I will just tell you, in my opinion, he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And it was really inspiring, to be in weekly meetings often with Larry and to kind of understand or try to understand the way he thinks about things. One of the things I learned there—not I would have been any different but not every leader thinks that way. Larry really does not care what kind of title you have or where you are in the organization. He just wants the smartest people that have the right knowledge, the most knowledge around the table. When topics are discussed, and I find that refreshing, it's really not about whether you're an EVP or a VP or whatever. That's the same way I would do things. In between Oracle, it's now Oracle, but I spent a year and a half at PeopleSoft that was very inspiring to me. David Duffield was the founder of PeopleSoft. And also now the founder of Workday. He's one of the most inspiring leaders I've ever worked for, just goes about his business in a quiet kind of way. But he has a unique ability to make everyone feel better than they are. You leave any meeting with Dave and you feel there's literally nothing you can't do. And that gets people on their toes. And then finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention John Chambers. I think John is a legendary leader. You know, what he did with Cisco, when he took over and the networking giant that he has built is truly inspiring. And if you've ever met John or seen John, what he brings to the party is just optimism and energy. And, you know, John, John is just an inspiring person to be around. He's also a really good human being, wants to do the right thing. And he's had a huge impact on that culture at Cisco that I described before. Very inspiring to see. I think the one thing I will always remember about John, I was there for five years. Any company goes through some dark days, from time to time, and there were times when Cisco stock was down or where Cisco was forced to lay off, you know, a lot of people. And those were actually the times when John was at his very best. That's when he was at the office every hour of the day, that's when he went out of his way to walk around, to pep up everyone else and tell people that we were going to be okay, and the people were doing a great job. And that's leadership to me, it's easy to lead when everything's going great. It's when there are challenges that you've got to show up as a leader and no one did that better than John. Truly inspiring to work from home like that.

Alan Fleischmann 

Any advice that he has given you that you'd want to share or advice that, you know, that has kind of been one of those great life truisms or just things that he's done that you just looked at, and said, you know, what, I'm gonna incorporate that in how I lead and it's been proved to be a great thing to have done.

Jesper Andersen 

Um, you know, I can't point to one individual thing I like, I had quarterly meetings withJohn when I ran the service by the video business because it was a very large business. And I like John's kind of very matter of factly. Right, there's no point and trying to pretend that it's something that it's not so one of the things—I didn't work directly for John, I worked for someone who worked for John. And, you know, I guess that leader and I differed a little bit in when I was doing quarterly meetings with John, my immediate manager wanted to do a lot of rehearsal and, you know, very specific PowerPoint presentations. And my view was always that even though it was a big business, John should be in his right to stop me at any point in time or call me and I should be able to tell him what's going on with my business without PowerPoints. And that's kind of how John is. He just likes to sit down and have a conversation about How's it going? And what can I do to help you? And so the one thing I think I took away from John as a leader and kind of have come to appreciate it, the more senior your leadership position is, the more your job turns into a coach. I think John knew that when it came to details around service via video, I was obviously going to have a lot more detailed knowledge than he was. That wouldn't be good if it wasn't that way. And so he was more interested in what can I, John do to help you run the business? And that's certainly how I try to leave today as well.

Alan Fleischmann 

That's great. You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And I'm here with Jesper Andersen, a good friend and we're talking about his journey as CEO of Infoblox. From his earliest days in Denmark to his two decades and more in Silicon Valley. You know, we were just talking a little bit about your journey and your leadership. I'm curious and—you went from all those extremely important positions, kind of like you know, if you think about it, it was your, you know, you're training, if you will, that got you to be a CEO yourself and the CEO of a great dynamic and growing company. What drew you to Infoblox I guess if you could describe maybe, in your own words to laymen who are listening right now, the difference between Oracle and Cisco and then Infoblox. In the world of networking, and infrastructure, that would be a very powerful thing for people to hear.

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah. So let me ask the question first, what drove me here, I would say, I've always had a dream of being CEO, it is the prime position in any company, obviously. And you can't really blame anyone, if things don't go, well. It's all on you. Even though you have a team and it's about building a team, I kind of like that. I view it a little bit as, if you've done a good enough job at the different stages of your career, and you truly get this opportunity to be CEO, and when I joined, we were a public company on top of that. It's kind of a little bit, if you've played baseball, your entire life, and you get a chance to step up to the plate in the major league. You can either do it or not, right, the chance of failure is there. But I've always liked that challenge and that thrill. And so that was definitely a motivator for me, not the only one. I didn't want to be CEO just for the sake to be CEO. But at Infoblox, I really like the culture. Interestingly, when I was at Cisco, and as I had joined Cisco just a few weeks into my job, my team back then had actually looked at a company called Infoblox and proposed an acquisition at that point in time, but I didn't really know anything about networking and I didn't have a strategy yet. And so we didn't do it. But I looked at the company five years before I joined the company, and came away very favorably impressed with Infoblox. So what is Infoblox do? And how do we differ from Cisco? Cisco is the largest networking company in the world, I guess we can debate Huawei kind of in that, but certainly one of the very largest networking and most successful networking companies in the world. And Cisco does every aspect of networking, whether it's routers, or switches, or firewalls, or all these different types of networking that exists, Infoblox, at our size, is obviously a lot more specialized. So we do a type of networking services known as DNS, DHCP, IP address management, these are all technical terms. But I think the way I would describe Infoblox is, without Infoblox, you can't connect to the network because you can't actually get an IP address on your device. And you can access any website or any application. Because that all starts with what's known as a DNS query. You can think of DNS as the phonebook of the internet and Infoblox is the leader in this type of networking service in the world today. We have over 8000 customers, our customers are the largest companies in the world, the most global brands across the entire world. We're a global company. So that's kind of what we do.

Alan Fleischmann 

Connective tissue. Very cool. And now we're in this you know, this pandemic, the Coronavirus, COVID-19. And obviously, there are challenges, you know, societally, globally, you're a global company. Are there any specific challenges that you're dealing with right now? Is it mainly for your customers? You know, we went from everyone being in their offices or being elsewhere to almost an entire globe being at home overnight. I'm just curious whether or not that presented challenges, I'm sure, it may have actually presented more dependency on you and maybe opportunities to advance?

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, I think the latter in particular, if you think about it. Our industry—our customers are across every industry. So for example, healthcare providers. So it's a pretty sobering moment when you realize that as gravely ill patients get into hospitals and as hospitals have increasingly moved to electronic medical records if our products for some reason do not work at that hospital, a doctor or nurse may not be able to call up an electronic medical record. And that would mean patients can die. And so it is very, very critical that our—work. Another set of customers are service providers, so telco companies, and obviously in these days when many of us work at home, this interview we're both doing from our homes, if these largest service providers in the world, f their services don't work, you can't connect to the internet. You can't work from home in those scenarios. So it is very critical. And as a result of that, obviously, we have significantly increased our focus, we've always had a great focus on our customers and, and their success, but that's definitely sharpened during these last few months of the pandemic.

Alan Fleischmann 

I imagine, you know, I think that's the thing. We don't always realize this. If this crisis had occurred even just a few years ago, you know, all the things that we depend on right now, they're all based on the building blocks in which you're building. I mean, in what you do every day, I mean, we're not taking for granted this ability to talk like I'm doing right now. I can see you and we can talk from one laptop to another, or one computer to another. But all the things we're doing right now around, you know, technology that's allowing us to kind of keep moving forward couldn't have happened without you guys, and couldn't happen, I guess, even just a few years ago. So this is still a nascent industry? Is it an industry that is transforming? Is it an industry that's risen? And is it at the top of its game already? How would you describe it?

Jesper Andersen 

Well, it's definitely an industry that's arisen. I think most companies across all industries around the world, realize that technology plays a more and more important role in the evolution of success of that company, we call that digital transformation. And we are a big part of that, in companies around the world, whether it's the hospital that I mentioned before moving to electronic medical records, and easier access to applications. Whether it's the transportation industry, where you've seen new innovation, the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. You can go across every single industry and you see digital transformation. And so I think one of the things that will come out in the aftermath of this pandemic is, you know, there will be companies that have done a better job of transitioning to work from home and have made the most of it, going through this pandemic, and there will be those that have not. And there will be a lot of boardroom and CEO and investor questions after this, of why did you appear, fair so much better than you. And you will see a lot of that coming down to a lack of investment in digital transformation. I see it pre-pandemic, I see it all the time when I meet with customers around the world. You know, I see those customers that are technologically advanced, that are investing a lot in technology. And I see those that don't. A big conversation that I'm sure most of your listeners read about is this adoption of cloud and cloud services. The companies that aggressively adopted cloud and cloud-based applications have fared much better through this work-from-home need than those that did not. If you had lots of physical data centers, but you couldn't get any of your employees in there, then you would be at a huge disadvantage. So there's definitely still the haves and have nots, and I think the have nots have and will realize through this pandemic, what kind of a disadvantage they're at. And that will give rise to even more in this kind of space.

Alan Fleischmann 

Yeah, I imagine that one of the after-effects will be exactly what you described. Those who, who saw the investment in technology as being, you know, a priority, and therefore they're in a better place today and those who said, Well, we don't have to worry about that investment now. And honestly, whether or not they really lagged, one of these,—

Jesper Andersen 

I don't think anyone, you know, people didn't invest in work from home capabilities, because they foresaw a pandemic, they did it because often people can be more productive if they don't have to commute an hour and a half each way, or because we all traveled a lot. And you want it to be productive when you were sitting at a Starbucks somewhere or in an airport somewhere. And it's the same technology, right? You have pretty much ubiquitous network connectivity anywhere. Wi-Fi exists anywhere. But how do you work from that Wi-Fi connection? And very importantly, how do you work securely? Because that's the other side of this.

Alan Fleischmann 

We've talked about this, you and I the issue of safety and security that actually shockingly, has not become a big, big issue right now, but probably needs to be and I know, that's a big priority at Infoblox. And you—and I talked about cyber risk then and what that means and what are you doing on that front?

Jesper Andersen 

So it—unfortunately, Alan, it is a very big issue right now because there are a lot of bad cyber actors out there that are trying to take advantage of this pandemic, right. We see an increase in cyber attacks that tries to somehow take advantage of COVID-19. That tries to, you know, they'll disguise attachments to emails that are known as phishing emails, somehow related to the virus and trying to trick people into opening those attachments, because that way, they infect your computers, they get ransomware or malware on your computer. And we are part of that cyber defense system. That's a whole industry. As you know, there are lots of different nuances of what companies do, what we try to do is help companies ensure that their employees do not go to bad websites. And I don't mean bad websites as the sense of pornography or whatever else you might not want them to go to. But to places that the malware or cyber terrorists have, which is called, it's often referred to in the industry as a command and control or C2 website, that's where their malware or ransomware connects, to get instructions. And if we can prevent connection to those sites, that's a big help to companies, obviously.

Alan Fleischmann 

As I said, this is one of those things when you think of Silicon Valley, you think of startups, everyone loves to talk about startups in Silicon Valley. And I'm always amazed by how many people want to tell you about the stories of companies that they were involved in that failed and the risk they took even more than the ones that have become household names. It's kind of in the DNA, I guess, of Silicon Valley. But I would imagine now, because of what is really leading, having had—having this multi year experience, you've been now the CEO for six years, right?

Jesper Andersen 

Five and a half.

Alan Fleischmann 

Five and a half years. You know, having that gravitas experience in a field that is constantly challenging itself must be a kind of counterculture. I mean, you know, in other words, I imagine you have to constantly renew your focus and culturally, but you also want to show that with it, you've got breadth and depth and gravitas. Tell me a little bit about how you stay fresh and new and actually, at the same time, hold on to the fact that you are a leader and experienced?

Jesper Andersen 

Well, for me, that's part of the excitement of living in Silicon Valley, and of the culture we have here. To be honest, I kind of feel incredibly fortunate to have gotten this opportunity. You know, a guy from Denmark getting a chance to be part of this great technological revolution and innovation center we have here in Silicon Valley. It’s kind of like a pinch-your-arm type of moment. I love the fact that there are so many smart people here, and we have this culture of funding all these startups, and that's up to the pandemic, you know, we are in one of the greatest bull markets of all time, and there's been so much capital available that pretty much every idea can get funding. And that's inspiring when you see some of these young entrepreneurs coming out with ideas and how much faster today they can build new solutions and applications because of the technology advances that's been made over the last decade or two. To me that's inspiring. So I spent a lot of time, you know, listening to TED Talks, or reading or whatever other opportunities, the internet is great with that respect, there's so much access to information. And so that's part of how I keep myself fresh. I get a lot of inspiration out of talking to our customers as well. Like I said earlier, I love learning. So you know, how different customers in different industries try to leverage technology, whether it's from established players will from startups is inspiring. And then I'd say when you talk about how do you keep fresh and how do you get inspired. We have for the last many years had a really good internship program at Infoblox. We try to take a number of interns in and these young people are inspiring to me. I mean, they ask a lot of great questions. They come in with fresh new ideas, and they help us as a company to stay on our toes and to innovate and be new, both in terms of the technology we built, but also the processes we have internally, how we treat our employees, and in every aspect of that. So there's no excuse for not staying fresh and not getting inspiration today, in my opinion, because there's so much information available at your fingertips today. And you can stay every bit as fresh and inspired even though I've been holed up in my home for, you know, a good five to six weeks now.

Alan Fleischmann 

You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with Jester Andersen. Andersen, if you were speaking with a good Danish accent, I guess Andersen. And we're talking about your role as the leader and CEO of Infoblox. One thing, I had a great conversation with you the day that inspired me. We were talking about you know, everyone's saying that one of the, you know, one of the great outcomes, if there's such a thing as a great outcome, but one of the positive outcomes, I should say, coming out of this pandemic, is everyone's reaffirmation that technology is going to be probably advanced at a much more, at a much faster speed. One of these we have to hold on to, and you had a very important conversation, is not letting people become xenophobic. And that they understand that we've got to be a global community and globalization will matter more than ever. There are those who would argue against it, as you can see, and that needs to go hand in glove with technology. And the other thing is culture, which we've been talking about. Getting to be more specific, I was fascinated by the fact that diversity and inclusivity, that conversation you and I had, where you talked about the fact that you get to travel the world. So you get to see the global world that we live in, and how it's so essential that it's, you know, a part of the—of where we go and how we approach the future. And you also talked very eloquently with me about getting a very specific reading, being inclusive, and showing a diverse, you know, employee base, for that matter if we're going to do right by our customers. And I was struck by gender issues that you brought up diversity in general. I remember using the example of India, for example, and how you're bringing certain people with you through technology right now that you couldn't have done, you know, prior to the pandemic Share a little bit about those values a little bit. And how do we maintain it? And why is it important, an inclusive and diverse employee base? Why is it important to be global?

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, I mean, I should preface this by saying I'm obviously a global citizen, even though I've lived in the United States for 25 years now. I am an immigrant, right. And there's a lot of discussion in the United States about immigration these days. And I understand the challenges. I think, you know, I feel as much as I love digital transformation, and I'm part of the technology sector, I also appreciate and understand that when companies go through digital transformation, it's inevitable. And as part of the progress, old-style jobs, in quotes, are eliminated, and we have to do a better job in this country of training and retraining people so that people that lost jobs to automation get a chance to get trained and participate in this new, more productive, more technology-centric type of society. It's not enough that some people participate in that. We've got to make sure everyone can get their fair share. But I think when it comes to globalization, yes, I am very much a global citizen. And as part of my job, certainly pre-pandemic, is to travel around the world and meet with customers around the world. I can't sit in Silicon Valley and think that every company around the world behaves like a company in Silicon Valley because our customers here are much faster to adopt technologies. And if we only build things for them, we'd be missing things for companies around the world. So part of traveling around the world is getting an appreciation of different cultures and different values. And the one thing that's always struck me is people in wherever you go in the world, whether you're in Asia, or you're in Europe, or you're in the Americas, or Latin America, or wherever you go. Fundamentally, people are the same. People want the same thing. They want to take care of their loved ones, they want to do a good job,  generally, about what they do, and do that in the most effective way to allow them to have a good lifestyle. And so, you know, I've always appreciated the values of the different cultures, I love learning about different cultures. And at Infoblox. Being a global company, we have a representation of different cultures. But we try to celebrate those cultures, the uniqueness of those cultures is exciting. And I think the discussion you referenced too, is we have a lot of Indian employees, because India is a very large country with a great education system, and they educate a lot of people with technology backgrounds. It's in many ways what brought India out of the colod, the Dark Ages, that gave it a much more prosperous type of society that was on the back of technology. You know, whether it initially was outsourcing and call centers and all that. So they have a great tradition. And I've always found that when I've traveled to India with as we've built teams in India, that they are very hungry to do more and to learn more. And so sometimes there's a bit of skepticism in the United States have. Yeah, but you know, they're much cheaper than us. And they can't be as productive as us, but they actually can. And they find, especially now with all this virtual technology, it gives us a chance to bridge the gap, so that it's not them and us. We are in this together and we can all learn from each other The people in India, our employees in India are eager to learn from us, and our people are eager to learn from them as well. These Zoom sessions, online video, breaks down those barriers and people can participate. We did a global dance competition over Zoom. And yeah, it was dominated by Bollywood dancing, because that's a tradition, but anyone can participate. And that kind of breaks down those cultural barriers sometimes, so.

Alan Fleischmann 

People are meeting each other that never would have known each other otherwise now. Kind of interesting, you're actually building the infrastructure that allows you to be your own kind of culture. In terms of your culture, you're actually importing it to your own culture, what you actually are building, you know, externally. It's very exciting. You've mentioned a few times, and I've seen you talk about one of your favorite books, The Innovators Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen, and you said it was one of the most profound books you've ever read. And I understand that inspired Steve Jobs and obviously led him to his path. Why is the book so important? I guess. And why do you love it so much? And what would you want to share about it?

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, so it's probably worth just recapping what the book is about. So basically, what the book is about is that in any industry, through the ages, there is disruption happening. And what that means is, most of the time, the companies that are leaders in a given era in a given industry, have a really hard time staying the leader over the long haul, because what made them very successful, is focusing on their customers. And their customers initially do not want the product. That's the disruption. So the some of the classical examples are, you know, IBM was the leader in mainframe computing. Digital Equipment became the leader in sort of what is sometimes called minicomputers. But both of them failed to kind of make the transition to PCs, where Microsoft and, and Dell and companies like that became the leaders. And that's because, in the case of IBM when they had mainframes when they went to all their big customers and asked those customers, would you want personal computers? Those customers would look at them and say, Why would I want that? I want you to put more capacity in my mainframe, more MIPS, faster computers, and so on. So that's the issue of the innovators dilemma. The dilemma is, do you embrace the disruptive technology? Or do you stay true to what your immediate customers want you to do now. That's what the book is about. It gives a lot of different examples across industries. And I read the book at a point in time, when I was leading a very disruptive technology at one of these large technology providers I worked for that you mentioned earlier. And reading that book literally made me leave my job and the company, because I realized that I was so early in this journey, and it was towards cloud computing, but a long time ago, and that there were so many obstacles of making that successful in that company, that it was going to be near impossible for me to be successful, right or wrong. I mean, the company has done super well and been very successful. But that was my conclusion at the time. And since then, I've come to realize that this happens everywhere. You go through industries today, you see what Uber and Lyft has done to the normal transportation industry. You see what Airbnb has done to, you know, the hospitality suite. And you can go on and on, right. You see what Zoom has done to normal meetings, or will do to normal meetings and travel. Every single industry, you can go through. You see it in banking right now, where every one of us wants much more virtual banking experiences. You see it everywhere. And that's innovators dilemma. The companies that are leaders in a given industry aren't always the ones that become leaders in the disruptive technology. There's more awareness of it right now. So they can do more to protect themselves. But that's really what the book was about. And yeah, that was profound for me.

Alan Fleischmann 

You think there'll be a big trend coming out of this period right now where, you know, the startup world and Silicon Valley are looking for more of the disruptors. I mean, that's obviously been a trend but you think that'll accelerate now?

Jesper Andersen 

I mean, I think it's at its peak. I think the thing that is different now, from 10-20 years ago, when I read the book is, it is so much faster and cheaper to create those disruptive technologies today than it ever was before. Back then, to build software or technology solutions, you had to buy big servers and laptops and hire a lot of people. And you have to write a lot of software from the ground up. Today, you don't need to buy new servers, you can have as many servers as you want in seconds by Amazon, or Microsoft, or Google or some cloud provider. You have these massive libraries of pre-built software that software developers can take advantage of. So you can hire, you know, five smart young developers who already have their laptops, and you don't even really need offices, they can sit in Starbucks, or in WeWork offices, or wherever else it is, and you can very quickly create that disruptive technology. Barriers of entry have never been lower than they are today.

Alan Fleischmann 

You know, speaking to the visionary leaders like yourself, I love to ask, you know, are there things—it can be way out of your space—what are the things that you predict will come in the not too distant future that we should be aware of? I mean, are there certain things that, you know, kind of gets back to your disruptive conversation with the innovative innovator's dilemma, but more generally? Are there things that you see coming out of this, good, bad, or ugly, that you think we should be thinking about, being more aware of?

Jesper Andersen 

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that's been written about what's known as the Internet of Things, right. And about analytics and big data, these are all topics that at least all of your listeners are at least peripherally aware of. And my view is, we haven't seen anything yet. The things that it's possible to do with analytics and big data, it is changing the world very, very rapidly. And thankfully, in these days of the pandemic, it's helping us a lot. The amount of testing that can happen before you test on humans in big analytics, data models and simulations, is unparalleled to what it was in the past. And that is, that's a big benefit. It's a risk too. We have to manage this use and proliferation of technology. I do worry about that from time to time. But if we manage that transition, well, the good it can do. Climate change is another big topic, right? And technology can help a lot in that kind of area. You start seeing self-driving cars, electric cars, a lot of those things can help climate change. Maybe just to double-click on that one. Technology can make a huge difference. It's another area where I'm very proud of my heritage in Denmark. Denmark became the first country I think, three or four years ago that ran a 24 hour period where they net produced more energy than they consumed based on alternative energies. So wind power, and so on. That's entirely possible. That's made possible by technology can be optimized in many different ways. I'm hoping that the current or maybe more likely future administrations in this country will see the profound impact that could have on continued innovation in the United States. We should be the leader in all of those areas. There's no reason why we shouldn't be the leader in alternative energies, and it doesn't have to conflict with everything we do around oil and gas. Over time, we can eliminate all of that, but we can do it in a transitionary kind of way that pulls all of society along and creates more good than not.

Alan Fleischmann 

That's where technology can be our answer. You know, one last question for you. We're thinking about life and living post-pandemic. You just referenced a few minutes ago that you've been now at home for several weeks, as we all have. Many of us have, if not all of us, who are the listeners. What is the thing you miss most and what is the first thing you might do we get out and about again?

Jesper Andersen 

Well, I'd say there are three things first, I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends physically. You know, we've had lots of virtual meetings but that's not the same as you know, giving people a hug and sitting down for a great meal and a nice glass of wine and talking and chatting. So that would be number one on my list. Number two on my list, going out for dinner. You know I love cooking, my wife loves cooking and we have done really well through this but there's something nice about going to a really nice restaurant and enjoying what they create. And I'm really looking forward to that. And then third, and these are not in priority order. I am really longing to go out and have a game of golf. I love playing golf. And, you know, I haven't been able to do that for quite a while now. So I'm looking forward to my first round when we can again do so safely.

Alan Fleischmann 

Well, that hopefully, that'll be soon, you know, based on the connectivity between what Infoblox does with science, maybe you're going to be a part of the solution to expedite some of that very important discovery. And honestly, I know that our scientists around the world are doing all that they can to get us those treatments, those therapies, and those vaccines. And, you know, I think we can start assuming that Infoblox is behind all that connectivity and networking that we need for all the above. Thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you for the culture that you're building. And thank you for your leadership. You really are building an amazing company. And I'm so blown away by how much of that has to do with you as a leader and the team that you've assembled. And you know, you've been on Leadership Matters today. I've been your host Alan Fleischmann. I'm with my friend Jesper Andersen. And we look forward to having you again thank you so much for being with us today.

Jesper Andersen 

Thanks for having me.

Alan Fleischmann 

Talk to you soon.

Jesper Andersen 

Bye.