Hugh Molotsi

Read my interview with PandoDaily about how Intuit is rewarding employees for thinking and acting like entrepreneurs.

Many people will be surprised to learn that the most dangerous animal in the African savannah is not the lion, or the crocodile, or the leopard. The animal that causes more human fatalities than any other is the hippo. While the hippo might look to some like a jolly roly-poly carefree character, that couldn’t be any further from the truth. Hippos are ill-tempered, aggressive, territorial, and most important, not afraid of humans. Many poor saps minding their own business canoeing down the river met their end when an angry hippo decided to capsize their vessel and gnash the occupants between their giant teeth.  Check out  this article  on hippos and read about their endearing “dung showering” practice.  If you ever go on safari, avoid the hippos! At Intuit, we use the acronym HIPPO to mean the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. Making HIPPO decisions is also something to be avoided. When it comes to innovation, data is what we valu...

What is horizon planning? At Intuit, we aspire to deliver best-we-can-be results in the current period for employees, customers and shareholders, while building the foundation for a stronger future – a concept we call “True North.” Horizon planning is a key set of principles we employ to balance our short- and long-term investments. Our horizon planning principles are based on Geoffrey Moore’s Harvard Business Review article, “ To Succeed in the Long Term, Focus on the Middle Term .” We use these principles to divide our offering portfolio into three stages: Horizon 1  – Our established offerings that deliver most of our current revenue, such as like  QuickBooks  and  TurboTax . Horizon 2  – Our fast-growing emerging offerings, such as like  Intuit Online Payroll  and  GoPayment . Horizon 3  – Our experiments that form our pipeline of potential new businesses. Visit  Intuit Labs  to check out some of our latest e...

Men’s restrooms at movie theaters might be the most biologically hazardous cesspools you may ever have the misfortune of experiencing. How does this happen? Do men somehow revert to their prehistoric dispositions? Does the lunar cycle impair accurate aim? Or are men just messy creatures? Here’s my explanation: In the morning, the janitor cleans up the restroom and makes it a welcoming place to empty the bladder. But at some point in the day, one distracted patron accidentally leaves a few droplets on the side of the urinal as he’s finishing up. The next patron comes along and before commencing his business notices the droplets on the floor. Not wanting to step on the mess, he positions himself a little bit further than optimal distance from the urinal all but guaranteeing he makes a bigger mess when he’s done. The next patron sees this bigger mess and positions himself even further away also contributing to the growing mess. The pattern continues until by the end o...

Intuit CEO Brad Smith, General Counsel Laura Fennell and I spoke at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco to share lessons we've learned applying lean startup principles at Intuit (see the video below). To learn  more about the Minimum Viable Products Intuit employees are launching, visit Intuit Labs . Also visit  Innovation at Intuit  to learn more about our culture of innovation.  Finally, check out SparkRent , one of our graduate applications we're very proud of.

I had the pleasure this week of traveling to Ukraine to attend the launch of Bionic University.  " BIONIC University is an open corporate university focused on tech education, soft skills and entrepreneurship education in Ukraine, serving as a social escalator for young talents and as a source of qualified workforce for the IT industry."  The university is part of a larger project, the Bionic Hill Innovation Park , which will combine the university, commercial and residential space to create an IT hub to help spur growth of the IT sector in Ukraine (Ukraine is one of the top producers of engineering university graduates in the world).  The first buildings of the Innovation Park will open in 2015. See news footage from the launch event.  Below are photos from launch day (Friday September 27th): Meeting Volodymyr Semynozhenko, Chair of the Parliament Committee on Sciences and Technology. Outside the cabinet offices with (L-R): Roman Popad...

I had the pleasure of attending the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative Hult Prize Dinner in New York by invitation of the Hult International Business School .  The Hult San Francisco team created Pulse which was one of six finalists (out of over 150 entrants from business schools around the globe) competing for the $1 million prize.  Pulse will be working with Intuit's txtWeb platform. The winner this year was Aspire , created by students from McGill University in Canada. Here are photos from the event: The Pulse team rehearses on stage. Yours truly. Pulse team members Charles Ojei and Saul Minkoff with Bill O'Connor. Pulse team members Niketa Malhotra and Charles Ojei. President Clinton announces the winner. Yours truly with Hult professors Mike Grandinetti and Larry Louie.