Social Impact Tech: Lenovo’s Jerry Paradise On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
At Lenovo, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all. We design and engineer product portfolios to meet the specific requirements of users. We have a dedicated education portfolio that includes durability features to withstand the rigors of modern classrooms, high-performance workstations that help design solutions for the future or the latest animated blockbuster, a portfolio of products designed for small and medium businesses, and considering new pressures of a demanding, fast-paced, multi-tasking workforce environment. Lenovo’s smart meeting solutions deliver meeting efficiencies by providing users with the tools to block out distractions and provide a more engaged meeting to boost performance confidence.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course, many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making an Important Positive Social Impact.” We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jerry Paradise.
Jerry Paradise, Vice President of Global Commercial & Product Management at Lenovo IDG leads the team that develops the portfolio strategy and product requirements, such as engineering and design specifications, for all of Lenovo’s commercial products, including Think-branded laptops and workstation PCs.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
Thanks for having me back! I am originally from New London, Connecticut and have always been drawn to the STEM world. I studied computer engineering and electronics engineering at North Carolina State University and spent 12 years at IBM before joining Lenovo. As a 17-year veteran of Lenovo, I’ve had an incredible journey at this company. I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the team that launched the world’s first foldable PC — the ThinkPad X1 Fold — among many other innovative devices.
I grew up in a military family so my we moved from state to state often. In fact, there are only few states that border the US coastline that my family didn’t reside in for some amount of time. I learned to make friends quickly and remember knocking on the neighbor’s doors looking for other kids to play with as the moving trucks left our driveway. Starting from a young age I remember being absolutely overtaken with computer technology. I remember how amazed I was the first time I saw my uncle load an accounting program into a car-sized ‘computer’ from a thin roll of paper and the first time I was able to send an email to a friend of mine that lived in another state. And I will never forget my first computer, the TRS-80 Model I, and the time I spent writing programs to amaze my parents and their friends.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
From about age 10 on, I increasingly spent a lot of time on a computer. I wasn’t a full-on computer nerd (at least I didn’t think so), but I spent a lot of time with my face glued to the screen of my TRS80 and Commodore 64, writing programs, fixing my friends’ broken PCs, and playing computer games. While my parents encouraged it initially, after all they bought my first computer, they regularly told me to get off the computer and find other hobbies because all the ‘playing’ on the computer was a big waste of my time. To this day, after graduating with two engineering degrees, holding various positions with IBM designing and manufacturing PC parts, and now leading the world’s largest commercial PC portfolio at Lenovo, my family and I have long fits of laughter when we are together about what started as surely a big waste of time. Follow your passions.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My first choice of majors entering college was Civil Engineering. Perhaps all the badgering my parents did about the ‘wasted time at the computer’ had finally sunk in. While studying Civil Engineering at NC State, I worked part-time at software retailer. While at work one day I got into a very long discussion with a customer on how to solve a particular computer problem he was having. I remember it was an interesting problem and the conversation went on for some time. The customer I was talking to turned out to be an executive with IBM named Bob McGaffin. Before Bob left the store that day, he offered me an internship on his research team at IBM. Bob and I would become friends and I learned many professional and personal life lessons through his mentoring. To make a long story short, after a semester working at IBM, I switched majors to Computer Engineering, graduated, and accepted a job with IBM. I am thankful to Bob, who long-ago retired from IBM, for recognizing my talent and passion for technology from that short, yet impactful, conversation.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” by T. S. Eliot
Throughout my life I have found that significant progress and breakthroughs are inseparable from uncomfortable risks. This holds for personal and professional growth, relationships, technological breakthroughs, and business success. Professionally speaking, many of the biggest products and business breakthroughs that I was a part of at IBM and Lenovo came with real potential to fail. You must accept that it’s part of the process and push on.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Three character traits that I think are critical are integrity, accountability, and perseverance.
Integrity — Throughout my career, there have been many situations where I have had to make important decisions, often without having all the information that I would have ideally had. The decisions often impact business outcomes, product strategy, and customer outcomes. In most cases, I must rely on someone to support me or my position, helping drive an initiative, and sharing the risk of a potential bad outcome. With few exceptions, I can count on the support of my team, leaders, and customers because of the trust, respect, and reputation we have built together over time.
Accountability — Most important decisions we make, personal or professional, almost always come with a level of uncertainty and risk. As I mention earlier, significant progress and breakthroughs are inseparable from uncomfortable risks and the potential for failure. Taking the personal responsibility for action, owning the outcome, and learning from the experience are critical to personal and professional growth.
Perseverance — Often, success comes from just showing up again and pressing on when it would be easy to stop. Many of the most successful breakthroughs in my career have come only after many ‘dud’ attempts and learning cycles. I have numerous examples of breakthrough inventions, disruptive PC products, and new incubation businesses that, if judged on their initial market success, would have been canceled before they had a chance to catch fire. It is important to fail fast but give ideas time, make adjustments, and keep pushing on.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
Our relationship with technology, as a society, has changed forever — how we live, work, play and learn has been turned on its head and a hybrid workplace is here to stay. At Lenovo, we are committed to enabling this transformation through our own evolution with human-centric technology solutions that span the pocket to the cloud — leading to smarter work, better results and helping our users reach their full potential to pursue their passions and goals. We are at an unprecedented point in time where we have more generations in the workplace than ever before, each with their own needs and ambitions, but who share a common goal to build a better future. The transformation to a hybrid working culture is encouraging better diversity, more community contribution and a far greater recognition of the importance of sustainability.
Lenovo’s story has always been about shaping computing intelligence to create a better world, and we are helping to remedy and raise awareness in a variety of broader challenges facing society. Whether it’s helping prevent the extinction of endangered species with Work for Humankind, helping achieve our vision of a net-zero future, or supporting small businesses with Queen Latifa and Evolve Small, we want to enable IT decision-makers, business leaders and end users to work collaboratively for the good of humankind. We continue to embed intelligence in our full portfolio of products with a 5G-connected world providing more access to information, innovation and collaboration anywhere in the world.
We also recognize the role technology plays in catalyzing better thinking and the positive impacts on society that come with having the time to think and use technology purposefully. Last month, we celebrated Lenovo ThinkPad’s 30th anniversary by conducting an in-depth global research study to examine the state of thinking today. We discovered global citizens are experiencing mental and physical burn-out driven by the tremendous societal challenges the world has faced over the past two years and as a result of being overworked and stressed. We released our first annual Think Report to showcase and validate the challenges of ‘real thinking’ and ultimately inspire people to engage in authentic thinking again. The findings from this research also help educate people on the importance of using technology more strategically, collaboratively — and less intrusively, in a way that is less distracting to living life and thriving.
How do you think your technology can address this?
With 30 years under our belt, we continue to evolve our PC portfolio with purpose-built devices and infrastructure that will enable users to reach their full potential in a hybrid world. For example…
The new ThinkPad Z-Series embarks on a contemporary design philosophy, featuring sustainable materials and the latest AMD technology. It’s purpose-built for a highly mobile business user with recycled aluminum and recyclable packaging.
Our flagship X1 series is built to support your most creative thinking and is optimized for hybrid workers and professionals who want an ultra-portable device and higher levels of performance, durability and reliability for on-the-go productivity. Our X1 portfolio also allows us to introduce trailblazing technologies such as our new generation X1 Fold which takes foldable PC technology to a new level of usability. It offers more user modes than ever before and adapts to numerous user scenarios for the best experience — from classic clamshell to portrait, landscape, tablet and book mode — so productivity, collaboration, content consumption, reading, writing, and editing are all a breeze in whichever mode one feels most comfortable using.
At Lenovo, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all. We design and engineer product portfolios to meet the specific requirements of users. We have a dedicated education portfolio that includes durability features to withstand the rigors of modern classrooms, high-performance workstations that help design solutions for the future or the latest animated blockbuster, a portfolio of products designed for small and medium businesses, and considering new pressures of a demanding, fast-paced, multi-tasking workforce environment. Lenovo’s smart meeting solutions deliver meeting efficiencies by providing users with the tools to block out distractions and provide a more engaged meeting to boost performance confidence.
We can provide Motorola smartphones, data-center solutions, software, services, visuals, accessories and much more. Lenovo’s vision is to create smarter technology for all and if we can contribute through that to help build a better future, then we have achieved our objectives.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I have always felt passionate about solving problems and that is what drew me to a career in technology. The transformation that the world and society have undergone recently has changed the fundamental ways we all work, learn, and are entertained. During periods of disruption, interesting and complicated problems arise that keep me and my tea up at night thinking about ways to solve them. The transformation in the workplace and in distance learning has exposed problems with connectivity, cyber security, and user experience we never imagined before. I spend a significant amount of my time with customers, talking with them to better understand their unique challenges and how Lenovo can use our technology to better enable their increasingly diverse workforces and students to reach their potential.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
The potential drawback of remote work technology is that people may feel overlooked and isolated. I was just reading this piece on Forbes, which conveys that without in-person interaction, employees may experience increased stress levels and bad decision making. Therefore, I think it is crucial to carve out time to think deeply and adopt the right tools for collaboration and workload management.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
- Identify the societal challenges people face today and shifts in workplace culture — It is essential to recognize and understand what people are experiencing nowadays so that we can create technology that better meets people’s needs and empowers them to live a thriving life. As shared, we took a moment to celebrate ThinkPad’s 30th anniversary to not only recognize our evolution of innovation but to take a beat and understand the current workforce climate and how we can help better the next 30+ years of humanity through technology.
- Pioneer new technologies and develop them into customer-centric products — With $1.3B invested in research and development in the last financial year, Lenovo is at the forefront of bringing innovation to market. Through research, we can better understand human behavior and unlock insights that contribute to continually developing customer-centric products, solutions, software, and services in key areas including device and infrastructure innovation, artificial intelligence, 5G, cloud/edge computing, blockchain, industrial design, augmented reality, sustainability services and more.
- Redefine meaningful innovation to create smarter technology for all — Innovation has traditionally focused on breakthrough technologies and new form factors, but Lenovo has been reframing the idea of meaningful innovation to update existing technologies, alongside groundbreaking products, that improve the way we live, work, and study. For example, Lenovo’s latest line of ThinkPad and ThinkBook laptops integrate state-of-the-art technologies like low blue light filters, AI-powered video optimization and noise cancelling capabilities for more productive meetings, and human presence detection sensors to enhance privacy and maximize energy efficiency.
- Develop your growth strategy with a wider societal purpose — When reviewing long-term goals, companies should focus on areas that can grow the business strategically and sustainably, as well as ones that can advance humanity overall. At Lenovo, we set a vision to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and we’re working with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to establish goals that support this. We understand the importance of setting credible, science-based emissions reduction targets and collaborating across industries. Lenovo is also committed to implementing sustainable practices. For example, back in 2017 Lenovo developed an innovative manufacturing process called low-temperature solder. The patented process consists of soldering components to the printed circuit board at lower temperatures. Apart from increasing stability in the manufacturing process, it improves energy conservation and helps lower carbon emissions. It fact, we estimate a reduction of nearly 6,000 metrics tons of CO2 per year. To put this into perspective, that is equivalent to the consumption of more than 650,000 gallons of gasoline per year. We are very proud of this invention and we believe the impact is so important that we have given the detailed procedure away to the electronic industry for free.
- Advocate democratization of technology for inclusion purposes — Technology companies must have the mindset of making their offerings more accessible and expanding their technological capabilities to address inequality. For example, We launched in 2020, Lenovo’s Product Diversity Office (PDO) which has a mission to implement a Diversity by Design review board and introduce checkpoints to Lenovo’s product planning, development and execution phases, which certifies that our solutions are both inclusive and accessible. The PDO consults with a broad range of diverse users to validate designs and provide feedback from engaging employees through partnerships with employee resource groups and diversity partners. By 2025, Lenovo will ensure 75% of products will be vetted by inclusive design experts through our Product Diversity Office to ensure they work for everyone, regardless of physical attributes or abilities.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Don’t underestimate the importance of even the smallest contribution in making a positive impact. Consider the environmental impact of your daily purchases, can you get it in a bottle or carton instead of a plastic container, recycle whatever you can, and keep reminding others the importance of environmental impact. If we all make small contributions, the overall impact will be huge.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I would choose to have breakfast with Larry Ellison. Larry is one of the most profound innovators and risk-takers in two areas that I am most passionate — technology and competitive sailing. Larry came from humble beginnings and is now one of the most successful innovators of our time in the world. He ran Oracle, had storied battles and victories with industry tech giants, and he brought that same passion to competitive sailing, ultimately leading Oracle Team USA to win the America’s Cup in 2013 with a historic 8-straight win finish. We would have plenty to talk about.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter — and you can keep up with Lenovo on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn!
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Lenovo’s Jerry Paradise On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.