Being the scion of an erudite family can sometimes be very
daunting to live with and even live up to. Not so much for John N.
Little, who co-founded a company, The MathWorks, whose flagship product
is MATLAB which is known to be used by about a million scientists across
the globe - to be able to do what they want to do really well
(innovations, discoveries, solutions, etc.). If you are wondering why
something that has such an astonishing following and endorsement by some
of the most brilliant minds on the planet does not have enough told
about it in the world, then here’s why: simply because when it was
conceived and developed by Cleve Moler (Co-authored by John Little) –
the idea wasn’t to create a mass product.
If anything, it was the
result of a super-genius’(Moler) quest to put to use his knowledge and
express it to the community or audience that is likely to make the most
out of it. That audience being, primarily, scientists and students (in
later years), it didn’t warrant any PR activity at all. Word-of-mouth
and the credibility of the co-founders did it for them.
Both of
the founders have, till date, (barring the brief period when Moler had
to work else as The MathWorks was too small to afford his pay, but he
continued to support them during this phase, nonetheless) lived and
breathed each day of their lives with The MathWorks.
If it was the
ingenuity of Moler, the mathematics champ, then it surely was the
enterprising self of Little that actually made MATLAB what it is today, a
fact vindicated by Moler himself when he said “‘I am the father of
MatLab, but Jack Little is the father of The MathWorks. He is the spirit
and the brains behind the company. Little had academic training as a
control engineer at MIT and Stanford so he knew the applications of
matrices to control theory, which is still one of the main parts of our
business – and I didn’t know anything about it. When the PC came out in
1982, Little figured that it could be used for technical computing. It
was Little who started the company.”
So, what started with just
the two MIT grads in the early ‘80s, has now become an organization that
not only commands much respect from some of the most ignited minds on
this planet (adopted by more than a million users, 5,000 universities
and colleges., but also has been able to become and stay commercially
viable as well as sustainable. The company today has around 3000+
employees working for it and it clocked revenues of close to a $billion
(App. $893 M).
All this couldn’t have been possible, as Moler himself expressed, with the wonderful thorough-bred Jack Little.
Family & Education and early sparks
Jack
Little is the son of renowned MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology) professor, John D.C. Little, who is best known for Little’s
Law – an operations research approach that he propounded. In fact,
Jack’s father is also known to have earned the first Ph.D. in operations
that was ever awarded in 1955. Not only that he is the founder of the
concept called ‘Marketing Science’ which he put forth based on his study
of humans and their buying behavior, besides starting a couple of
companies.
It is only natural that with such an upbringing one
would expect children in such environs to either grow sick of what the
seniors do or like in the case of Jack, pick up inspiration from them
and chart a path of success for themselves in due course. And so it was
that, Jack Little completed his bachelor’s in electrical engineering
from, where else, but the MIT from 1974-78 and then, as if that was not
enough, he further went on to do his M.S. (Electrical Engineering) from
the hot-bed of many great possibilities and that has so given many
entrepreneurs of the modern world, Stanford University, which he did
from 1978 - 1980.
Serendipitous Rendezvous…
Around
the time he graduated from Stanford, a chance meeting with yet another
of his ilk, Cleve Moler, determined the path for Jack for the rest of
his life. Given that both were learned men with exemplary educational
backgrounds, the two got along well and mostly delved into math and its
application in science. It was their keen study of life in general and
the life and work style of scientists and engineer that helped them in
recognizing the need among this specific group of people for more
powerful and productive computation environments beyond those provided
by languages such as Fortran and C and, further, in putting to use their
own expertise and experience in maths, computer science, and
engineering, for developing a high-performance technical computing
environment that they would call MATLAB (Short for Matrix Laboratory).
While
Moler did the ground-work on the most effective application of matrices
in scientific work – that was crux of the dev environment (MATLAB),
Jack helped give it the much needed demand and utility angle propelled
by the fact that MATLAB combines comprehensive math and graphics
functions with a powerful high-level language.
The two men
respected the fact that while their skills-set were distinct their
capabilities were complementary. And it was this deep understanding of
each other and their combined belief in the product / solution they had
together built for better use, which has led to them being still at the
company they co-founded more than three-and-a-half decades ago.
Modus Operandi…to begin with
Moler
had developed MatLab but it took flight after he joined hands with
Jack. Moler’s objective in creating MatLab was simple – to enable
students to use the LINPACK and EISPACK math libraries without having to
write FORTRAN programs. Being the shrewd and visionary man he was, when
Jack reckonedit is a powerful software with the potential to enable
engineering, scientific, and technical applications on personal
computers (which also happened to come around in 1982). Thus with that
spurring the duo into putting together many such aspects, backed by
their experience, they further developed it so that it can very
effective. They worked on it for about 3 years after setting up The
MathWorks in Boston (MA) around 1982. Once they were sure that it was
ready to be used, whom did they sell it to?
You probably would
have guessed that since it is a platform/solution aimed at scientists
and engineers and since who better than an institution that has
historically been one of the most fertile places for innovation, MIT
which was also in the vicinity of the company (Cambridge, MA). If you
did then you were bang on.
MIT was the company’s first customer to
buy 10 copies of MatLab in 1985 and thus began the saga of great
word-of-mouth publicity – the best and most credible form of marketing
you can get for your offerings – and it was soon getting adopted by
hundreds and thousands of scientists, engineers, and students across the
globe it realizing their own potential to create great things – with
the help of MATLAB.
Growth and stability…
That
Jack and team had built something absolutely critical for the scientist
fraternity was beyond any doubt. With that sense of satisfaction, Jack
continued to make the company scale, attract the best talent, create
further products and solutions, and generally stick on to the original
purpose with which it was started (the guiding principle being that they
reckon, feel, and dissipate the importance of maths as the cornerstone
of all sciences) – all without going cut-throat commercial.
In
fact, for all we know, it was MIT’s initial purchase of MATLAB and
Jack’s as well as the company’s association with MIT that has lasted for
so many years that helps to reinforce everybody’s faith and confidence
in The MathWorks products - especially MATLAB.Asa Fellow of the IEEE and
Trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, he writes
and speaks about technical computing, Model-Based Design,
entrepreneurship, and software industry issues.
Since MATLAB was
intended at researchers, innovators, scientists, and students, Jack took
a very bold decision of providing it to students for a subsidized price
– which initially was resisted and feared by many as a potentially
counter-productive move, as it could lead to piracy and opportunity cost
besides, of course, denting into the confidence of regular licensed
users who would feel kind of robbed. But, Jack was right in this case
too, like he was always from the beginning, which was proven by the fact
that the user community in general did let that happen as it ensured
they used it responsibly. Hats-off to Jack’s vision of ensuring greater
adoption as well as retaining the faith of existing users.
Other associations:
| |
 | A Fellow of the IEEE and Trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council |
| Stanford & MIT Alumni |
Quotes
| |
| “It’s a great time to be a controls engineer, turns out. The world has more things to control than it has ever before.” |
| “The MathWorks makes tools for control engineers and as such we are involved in all sorts of industries.” |
| “Basically, the world is coming towards us as control engineers.” |
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