it's been a tough year for businesses
trying to adapt to kova 19 lockdowns but
the pandemic also forced them
to look at how they're doing business
and whether there are better ways to be
productive technology company autodesk
develops software and services to help
companies grow and change with the times
joining me now autodesk ceo andrew
anagnost uh andrew before we get started
all of our viewers may not know exactly
what your company does can you briefly
just explain what it is you do
yeah you know autodesk makes software
for people that make things so
think about architects you interact with
engineers designers
construction professionals manufacturing
professionals we make software for those
people
and our job is to use the power of the
cloud the power of
almost infinite compute capacity we have
in the cloud and
artificial intelligence to help those
people make
better more sustainable more profitable
and more reliable solutions to the
things they design and make
so it was saturday was probably the last
day that some viewers
set foot in their office um i realized
that while the year felt like a long
time you probably haven't redesigned all
of corporate america yet
but i imagine you're thinking about what
the office of the future looks like now
that we've all got pandemics on the mind
how is autodesk helping offices
reshuffle things
yeah so we're all thinking about the
office of the future and how people come
into offices and how they work but more
importantly
it's how people work that matters you
know one of the things the pandemic
taught our customers
is that if they weren't digital first
they were not resilient and responsive
to disruptions in their processes
so one of the fundamental things were
changing and preparing for the customers
that we work with
is there's going to be fewer people in
the office all the time and their
workforces are going to be distributed
almost permanently now and that makes
you a different tech
company from a lot of others right zoom
suddenly was needed by everybody during
the pandemic for
autodesk with a construction company i
assume some of those people are just
coming back
online you know your your subscription
service which is what wall street loves
but i assume your billing
slowed a little bit are they now going
to accelerate as we reopen
yeah interestingly enough you know uh
while buildings and construction did
slow down
our in-office solutions which are which
are what used at the
upfront part of the construction process
that actually accelerated during the
year we actually
got more people collaborating with 3d
models online
and virtually than we had in the
previous years so
what we're seeing is a steady rise in
activity with the rest of the process so
we absolutely
expect an acceleration of construction
activity as we head into the second half
of this year
but it was interesting to see how people
retooled and started buying different
parts of our digital portfolio
to enable their work to continue even
while the construction
site the activity there slowed down a
bit
well i'm going to take that as a good
sign for the reopening of the economy
but i want to ask you even with stronger
growth you're in the automation business
a lot of people are concerned
that to be blunt robots are taking
humans jobs
uh is that something they should be
worried about
well you know the short answer that
question jack is the robot's going to
take some jobs
but the long answer is a little bit more
complicated
see what's happening is is that robots
and machines in general
are augmenting human capability and with
any one of these transformations what
you see is
some jobs go away but new types of jobs
are created you know let's let's take
uh for example the telecommunication
boom over the last century for example
it's it's
it represents kind of where we're going
highly automated highly networked tools
and what happens sure we don't have
operators
putting plugs into pin boards anymore
but we have a whole ecosystem of people
that
maintain highly automated
telecommunications infrastructure
that maintain the infrastructure that
carries the signals
that build new infrastructure to carry
those signals 2g 3g 4g
5g and we have whole new types of jobs
in many cases
higher paying jobs that support that
highly networked highly automated
environment
that's what we're going to see in this
new world so clearly the message for
people is
whether you like it or not you do have
to retool and get new
uh skills if your job is going away i do
have one more very quick question we're
out of time but you made a reference to
the planet
i know sustainability is important for
you you are number four on baron's list
of the top sustainable companies
can you give us one example of a thing
you are doing that is sustainable but
that also helps your bottom line
well you know what one thing we're doing
is we 10 years ago we set a target to
reduce our carbon emissions by 43
and we did it and this year we're going
to be net zero
and that's not only good for the planet
it's good for our bottom line because
how did we get there we changed behavior
we put a price on carbon internally in
the company and that price on carbon
changed people's behaviors in ways that
allowed them to
get things done in frankly economically
better ways while reducing the carbon
footprint of the company
that's just one example of where we're
trying to lead by example
and lead our customers that's really
interesting andrew thank you so much
appreciate you coming on
pleasure