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BANGALORE, INDIA: Scott Cook, who founded Intuit Inc. in 1983, was one of the prominent speakers on day two of the TiE Entrepreneurial summit.
Besides applauding Bangalore as the most conducive destination for innovative technicians and thinkers, he also illustrated the very core of entrepreneurship by narrating Intuit's own growth.
He chose to explain innovation through an example about a certain gentleman from North Carolina who goes by the name of Malcolm McLeam, who experienced the sorry state of a sea vessel called NS Savannah, which was best in class during its time but was abandoned due to lack of takers.
The reason being the enormous costs of loading and unloading good into the vessel. Malcolm did what was then regarded as a bizarre thing to drive goods trucks directly on to the vessel having created a solid base to house the truck.
Having reached the destination, the trucks could drive out and deliver the goods. Cook regarded this out-of-the-box thinking as 'one of the first examples of entrepreneurship stemming out of superior thinking'.
Since those days, more sophisticated methods of loading and uploading containers have happened, but it was one man's brainwave which ensured 98 per cent cost reduction in business.
Intuit's own story of growth with a no-frills financial management software is a similar one where a bunch of 7 people visited people's homes, workplaces and working environments to understand their needs and come up with a solution which cuts off all unnecessary applications, going completely against competitors who fell over each other in an attempt to pack in as many features as they could.
Intuit's product line that includes Quick Books and Turbotax have evolved this philosophy over the years to provide solutions to cater to users that according to Cook, 'think General Ledger is a world war hero'.
Speaking exclusively to CyberMedia News, Cook said that Intuit has dedicated an R&D center to India, housed out of Bangalore with a strength currently of 235 people, who are aimed at 'innovating at every stage based on customer needs'.
With teams focusing on SaaS and on-demand computing, the center hopes to strengthen Intuit's strong focus on strong and mid-sized organizations worldwide where there are 'untapped opportunities'.
He also indicated that Intuit would focus heavily on mobile applications and enabling users to use mobile devices as the core platform for most financial transactions.
