Jack Little, CEO, The Mathworks

Jack Little, CEO of The MathWorks (Natick, MA), says employees, not customers, are his first priority. The 43-year-old boss asserts that happy, motivated employees are the key to generating high levels of customer satisfaction.

Evidently, Little's philosophy is working for the company's 400,000 customers, who are located in over 100 countries and on all seven continents--yes, even including Antarctica. Sporting a client roster that encompasses more than 2000 universities and such technical powerhouses as Boeing, General Motors, Honeywell, Motorola, NASA, and Texas Instruments, The MathWorks is the world's undisputed leader in the $200 million market for software that analyzes research data.

At the heart of this success story stand the company's flagship products: MATLAB and Simulink. Together with co-founder and Chief Scientist Cleve Moler, Little has parlayed these products into a global standard of excellence.

MATLAB combines numeric and symbolic computation with data analysis and visualization. Providing a computational engine for all of The MathWorks' products, MATLAB includes a high-level language that allows users to interactively explore, analyze, design, and prototype solutions to engineering problems.

Simulink uses a graphical, block-diagram approach to enhance dynamic system simulation and facilitates performance evaluation for refining system designs. Such software simulation reduces the time and expense associated with the creation of physical prototypes. Design efficiency increases while time-to-market shrinks.

Yet, the company's focus remains not on the somewhat esoteric functions of its products, but instead on the ultimate societal benefits they make possible. As noted on The MathWorks' Web site, 'MATLAB users are making better and faster progress in vital areas; they are advancing our knowledge of the earth, the environment, and the universe; they are making our cars safer and more fuel efficient, and improving air travel safety; they are making our phone calls clearer and measurement devices more accurate; they are making advances in medical research and diagnostic techniques; they are searching for new sources of energy; and they are educating the next generation of scientists. The advances made by those 400,000 people have a direct, vital, and positive impact on the lives of over 3 billion of the world's people.'

Little motivates his team by encouraging fresh ideas, fostering involvement, and offering recognition. Even the company's 175,000 square-foot headquarters reflects the employee focus. The results of company-wide brainstorming sessions, departmental discussions, and an internal on-line survey went straight to the architects to ensure that the building would capture the opinions of the workers who would populate it. The final floor plan includes 'neighborhoods' of departments that regularly interact surrounded by informal, open 'exchange areas.'

Such radical thinking epitomizes The MathWorks' lofty stature in the high-end math software arena. Although this privately held company doesn't publish sales figures, industry analysts universally declare The MathWorks as the world's leading developer and supplier of technical and computing software. Since its inception in 1984, the company asserts that it has been profitable in every year of its existence.

Despite the fact that the firm now employs more than 500 people, employees still enjoy perks such as:

• An in-house exercise facility

• Donations to a range of charities suggested by the employees

• An annual vacation weekend for employees and their families

• A $1000 bonus to employees who stop smoking for more than six months

Unsurprisingly, The MathWorks' staff is enthusiastic about the working environment. Last year the employees' business meeting was held in the Bahamas. As one young woman observed, 'I knew it would be challenging to work here; I didn't expect fun to be such an integral part.'

Through his unrelenting focus on employee satisfaction, Jack Little has infused The MathWorks with a fervor that has been exuberantly transmitted to the engineers and scientists who use its software. In fields as diverse as aerospace, biometrics, and finance, customers laud the efficiency and time savings that MATLAB and Simulink provide. The enthusiasm then flows beyond the customers and into the societies that their works enrich. In this way, The MathWorks continues to grow and expand its positive sphere of influence--proving that Jack Little's unconventional management style is undoubtedly a model of excellence.