Q&A: Talking with Terry Jones
Western Region Conference Keynote
Terry Jones founded Travelocity.com
and led the company as president and
chief executive officer for six years. He
then took the company public. After
leaving Travelocity, Jones was a cofounder of Kayak.com and served as the
company’s chairman until it went public
and was later sold to Priceline.
NAED: What are the common
challenges of innovation you see
with businesses?
Jones: What has happened in business
to consumer is pretty clear. It’s the
online revolution. Travelocity.com
started with travel and now 60% of
travel is booked online. That same
revolution is happening to all kinds
of retail as we’ve seen with Amazon
and others. And that same revolution
is happening in business-to-business.
Customers expect to be able to find out
all about the product you have, what it
does, and what it costs online.
NAED: What are the traits of an
innovative culture?
Jones: The key is to experiment and to
be okay with failure. You have to see
what works for you and your business.
And, a lot of businesses will say, “We’ve
always done it this way. We’ve never
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done it any other way and that won’t
work for us.” That attitude just stifles
innovation.
NAED: How have customers
changed?
Jones: Today customers are multichanneled. They move pretty
seamlessly between looking on
the Web and talking on their smart
phones...and they expect all of those
things to work. They’re impatient.
Instead of going out to source and find
three vendors and talking to all of them,
now they just search for it online. They
are empowered by the information they
get online and they know a lot more
than they used to.
NAED: What advice would you give
to a company just getting into
e-commerce?
Jones: It’s important to find someone
that understands your industry. Since
people don’t look in the Yellow Pages
anymore, you need to make sure that
you’re sufficiently listed online so
that when someone looks on Yahoo
or Google or Yelp your company is
there. And, you need to have as much
information about your product that
you can get online. A website can no
longer be just a place for customers to
find a phone number.
NAED: If you had to choose one
single, greatest lesson you learned
during your time at Travelocity,
what would it be?
Jones: I had a good friend that I
brought in and hired. That person was
underperforming. I worked with him
and I kept working with him probably
longer than I should have. He wasn’t
performing and we suffered because
of it. You have to work very hard to
develop the very best team you can
and if someone isn’t cutting it, then you
know it’s time to make that change.
stay current
Jones will present the keynote “The
Business of Innovation” at the Western
Region Conference January 20-22 at the
JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Phoenix. His
keynote will explore the fundamentals
of innovation—how to generate great
ideas, how to “fail fast,” how to kill
projects without killing people and how to
experiment and do more with less.
NAED