Designing the future
Autodesk president and CEO Andrew Anagnost, a self-professed tech optimist, reads sci-fi to suss out future trends, and sees humans collaborating, like Tony Stark in Iron Man, with machines.
WHILE growing up, Andrew Anagnost, president and CEO of Autodesk, didn't read the most important Silicon Valley memo. So, instead of dropping out of college to become a storied tech guru like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, he quit high school. Despite that, he still became a leading light in the tech field.
Mr Anagnost, who is a qualified rocket scientist, declares that he was a "problem child" in his youth. "I'll blame it on traditional education which was not working for me... I won't blame it on the fact that my parents didn't provide me much structure when I was young. They didn't know what to do with me because I was hyper and a little more intelligent than average."
When he dropped out of high school, he hadn't yet heard of Steve Jobs. Fortunately, a lot of people saw his potential. And so he got back on track with his education and earned degrees in engineering and, to cap it all, he did a PhD in Aero/Astro and Computer Science at Stanford University.
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.