SHIFTS IN DESIGN

摘要

Imagine that after years of hard work, you've managed to make your product the top seller in its industry. Your customers give you kudos, the trade press gives you awards, and your brand is a household name. When you speak in public, you can say things like: "If God didn't make it, our engineers probably did." And you'd be right. A success? Hardly. This is exactly where Autodesk was a year and a half ago, and it threw CEO Carol Bartz into a funk. The problem wasn't what was going on within Autodesk, but what was happening outside. Twenty-year-olds with spiked hair and all-black wardrobes were getting solid investments for shaky ideas. A new Web shopping site called Cyberian Outpost was making a name for itself by airing ads showing a cannon firing gerbils at a wall. It really was a strange new world.