With a history dating back to the early ’80s, Intuit Inc. has survived through some of the most turbulent times in the software world, in no small part due to its philosophies regarding the role of its users in developing solutions.

Scott Cook, founder and chairman of the Executive Committee at Intuit, joined John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during QuickBooks Connect in San Jose, CA, to talk about changes Cook has seen in his time at the company, what its current focuses are and what he sees as some of its best strengths.

The focus of entrepreneurs

Early in the conversation, Cook shared what he sees as one of the most important parts of a business strategy, not only for Intuit, but for virtually any company. “My theory is that entrepreneurs find the intersections of two circles … people’s biggest unsolved problems … and the ones that we can solve,” Cook stated. “Find what’s in that intersection and focus there.”

He also picked out a number of other important efforts Intuit keeps in mind when formulating its approach to the market and its customers, including “trying to help our leaders see the future and make the big strategic calls,” as well as “helping grow our entrepreneurs and then grow the culture around them.”

Testing for customer usability

Looking back at the history of Intuit, Cook described the importance of testing for customer usability, saying that when it shifted from listening to direct user results to the loudest voice in the room, or the boss’ voice, product quality tended to suffer.

“I think maybe the most important thing [is to] set up a culture where you make decisions based on fast, cheap experiments. … Then we learn from [those experiments] why [a project] didn’t work … and we learn by doing, not by debating in a conference room,” Cook said. “Set up your company so people can take the idea and run an experiment. … The learning begins when you first get real people trying your idea for real.”

The mobile future

The next large part of the interview focused on the modern state of technology, with mobile being the most prominent facet of it. “[Mobile is] the fastest-growing platform by far. … That’s where we’re aiming a lot of our innovation,” Cook shared.

And while recognizing the market penetration of mobile devices is one piece of that strategy, tailoring utilities to the nature of the platform is a larger one. Cook gave one use-case as he described a mobile utility that tracked business travel for self-employed workers for IRS purposes, and the drop of user interest when they encountered the problem of it draining battery life too quickly. Once Intuit reworked the program to not rely on steady GPS pinging, thereby reducing the energy drain, the user levels quickly surpassed those of its original version.

Looking at the QuickBooks Connect event, Cook said, “The star of the show is small businesses and how they succeed.” He felt that for Intuit, “at the end of the day, we don’t measure ourselves in software. We measure ourselves in ‘How much money did we save for small businesses?’”

Watch the complete video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect.

*Disclosure: Intuit and other companies sponsor some Quickbooks Connect segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Intuit nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE