Social Impact Tech: Steve Potash of OverDrive On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
An Interview With Jilea Hemmings
OverDrive’s vision is for “A World Enlightened by Reading.” Illiteracy is a global challenge. The opportunity to contribute to providing equity of access and equity of opportunity begins in our schools, public libraries and universities and extends into every home. OverDrive’s mission includes innovating with digital content and technology to help reduce the digital divide, and to improve access to books and information.
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 Steve Potash.
Steve Potash is a Cleveland, Ohio entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of OverDrive, Inc.,the world’s leading digital library supplier of ebooks, audiobooks and other digital media serving 73,000+ libraries, schools and university institutions in 88 countries. He is married to OverDrive’s co-founder Loree Potash, an academic librarian and attorney, and has 3 children along with 7 grandchildren. Steve and Loree Potash created believeinreading.org to support literacy programs for underserved communities, and they also serve on several non-profit Northeast Ohio boards.
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?
I am one of five children, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Both my parents are Holocaust survivors. My mother came to the U.S. as a war orphan and was raised in foster care. At an early age, I learned to be an entrepreneur. I started a variety of part-time businesses and in college worked evenings in commission-based sales.
I studied journalism and public relations at The Ohio State University then returned to Cleveland and began to work in promotions and marketing. During 1974 I helped to create and lead “The Around the World Auto Race,” an international antique car rally that celebrated the U.S. Bicentennial celebration in 1976.
While working, I attended night school at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and after graduation was admitted to practice law in Ohio. By the late 1970s, I started my own solo law office. While seeking to grow my practice, I began to experiment with digitizing law book content and automating areas of client data management. This led to developing electronic book software which I then licensed to West Publishing to create the first series of PC-based electronic law books. The business of partnering with book publishers to develop software that creates electronic book editions led to the creation of OverDrive, Inc. in 1986.
Over the next 35+ years, my efforts through OverDrive to advance the vision that every book would be available to all readers on any screen evolved from disk-based materials through the CD-ROM era to today. Along the way, we have created numerous contributions to today’s global ebook and digital reading ecosystem. We manage the world’s largest catalog of digital books and other media available to a global network of more than 73,000 libraries, schools, universities, government and corporate centers in 88 countries. OverDrive’s reading apps, Libby for libraries and Sora for schools, have received numerous awards for their success in delighting and educating readers of all ages with digital books and materials in over 100 languages and all genres.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Working to support the efforts of our nation’s librarians has created many numerous memorable and interesting stories about access to books and reading. I’ll share a more recent occurrence.
It begins with the story of how over the past decade, public libraries have expanded beyond what baby boomers like me fondly recall from memories of growing up at my neighborhood library. Over the past few years our nation’s libraries have transformed. They offer extraordinary free services for every citizen, every age, every interest. This comes from the combination of their physical spaces, curated materials and trusted access to reference and entertainment resources. Yet half of all Americans do not have a library card. This missed opportunity to benefit from their local library is due to lack of awareness, recollections of the library of the past and, for many, challenges to get to the branch or barriers to online access.
As a result, OverDrive with the guidance of librarians began experimenting with ways to use the smartphone to bring the library to the reader. We worked with the San Antonio Public Library and other innovative urban libraries to test an Instant Digital Card. From a web browser or inside our Libby reading app, a user could get an Instant Digital Card in less than 30 seconds with just their name and mobile number.
OverDrive’s Instant Digital Card program was initially designed to capture the attention of millennials, Gen X and Gen Z smartphone users and tempt them to borrow with a few clicks a free best-selling ebook, audiobook or a popular digital magazine. Since launching the service now available in 70 metro markets in the U.S., over 1.1 million users got their instant card and now benefit from their local library and great digital books.
An unexpected and very interesting outcome from this service is how outreach librarians at King County Library System (KCLS.org in metro Seattle WA) leaned into a local challenge. Angela Nolet, an innovative public librarian at KCLS, shared with me that at the start of the pandemic, the county issued free smartphones to the homeless and to those in community shelters. The librarians wanted to ensure that these users would have access to critical information and digital books from KCLS’s ebook and audiobook collection. Most libraries require a library card application that includes a home address to verify they live in the service area. Angela and the KCLS modified the Instant Digital Card sign-up routine and librarians met with these individuals, helped them install a free library app, instantly get a digital card then start accessing and downloading books.
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?
In the early days of OverDrive, I was very fortunate to be introduced to Sidney Dworkin, who at the time was the Chairman, CEO and founder of Revco Drug Stores (which was sold to CVS). Sidney was a CPA by training, but an entrepreneur who started with one pharmacy and built Revco to become the nation’s leading drug store chain. Sidney provided me with financial and moral support. But more importantly, his thoughtful perspective, wisdom and stories of growing his business through many years of challenges helped me persevere during the early and most challenging decade.
OverDrive and my vision for the future of electronic books were many years ahead of the commercial and consumer market. When Sidney launched Revco, as the first mass retailer of drugs competing with legacy and local pharmacies, he experienced similar challenges. Having Sidney Dworkin there for me personally provided me confidence to persist through the early and toughest years of OverDrive.
I was similarly very fortunate to have similar guidance, support and leadership advice from several other early OverDrive Board Members. These include Kent Johnson, Mike Vantusko, Ed Rosenthal, Herb Rosen, Dr. Larry Singerman and others.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Be careful what you ask for.” I lost my father shortly after his 65th birthday. At his 65th birthday celebration, he told the story of himself as a young teen hiding in the woods in what is now Ukraine. As the Nazis were hunting to kill his family, in prayer he asked God to spare his life, and asked then that God grant him a full life — like the old men he was familiar with — to live to 65.
At his 65th birthday, he acknowledged his mistake as he said, “God, I should have asked for more.” This guides me to set my goals thoughtfully. I try not to limit the upside and reach beyond the first instinct, as well as think carefully about other areas of the “ask.” I have witnessed too many instances of unintended consequences from the request. It’s like the genie giving you three wishes. Be careful with each wish.
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?
1. I’m relationship-focused over transactional. Many of OverDrive’s strongest partnerships today are the same companies, executives and others that rejected presentations and pitches over the course of many years. I would always comment with goodwill and intent, “if working together now doesn’t fit your needs or plans, I hope to earn that opportunity in the future.” Combined with my response to part two of this question, OverDrive and I have benefited from longstanding personal relationships with the CEOs and heads of the nation’s leading publishing companies, institutions and associations around the world.
2. Persistence. This trait is important for building any successful product or service. While we employ a variety of agile processes in getting tech and apps to market, the lack of commercial success during the early years required toughing it out with little or no revenue. Persistence is required in improving your value to your customers or prospects, selling your vision, raising capital, pursuing the success you set out for. If you truly believe you are on the right path, don’t give up.
3. Live by the golden rule. The principle of this rule includes many others that have served me personally and OverDrive well. I know that building and maintaining trust is one of the most valuable assets that a business or executive can have. But to earn trust, you must have honest dealings and stand by your word Admit when you are wrong and treat everyone in every organization with respect. During my early years as a new lawyer, I learned it was the court staff and every person in the building that deserved my taking the time to learn their name and their job with the court or the clerk’s office. Today I am as eager to meet every person at each library or school since they are the frontline workers that deserve the same respect as the administrators at the top of the organization.
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 vision at OverDrive is “a world enlightened by reading.” The impact of low literacy levels creates barriers in every community. Reading skills are the foundation for every step of success for every life. Starting from infancy, the exposure to books and reading can directly determine a student’s success, opportunities for their career or advocation and their personal and family wellness.
Today’s challenges also include how all readers can access and best comprehend content. This is where digital reading apps expand the options for learners to benefit from a book on a screen, large type, with audio, often supplemented with built-in dictionaries, translation and other accessibility tools. Add these tools to the materials selected, curated by librarians, and you also benefit from knowing that a highly trusted source is supplying the book or materials.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Technology alone is not the answer. OverDrive’s ability to deliver outcomes for readers of all ages is highly dependent on the expertise of librarians and educators. The specialized skills of public, school, academic and corporate librarians to select, curate, recommend and monitor how books and media are being utilized is the key element for solutions.
With the right book, both Libby the library reading app and Sora the student reading app have proven to result in more time reading. This includes reading (or listening to an audiobook) in more places, more conveniently, with an ease of access to the book on almost any device. It’s easier to measure and test readers for reference and nonfiction learning. But fiction and stories help comfort and improve the wellness and outcomes for readers of all ages.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
As OverDrive leaned into partnering with public libraries and schools, we embraced the civic and community missions they fulfill for their communities. We recognize our foundation of education as well as access to libraries, books and online resources provided us the ability to succeed. This helped us launch our family foundation that created believeinreading.org which supports dozens of literacy-based programs.
My wife Loree Potash is a librarian. She started as a cataloger, then led reference services and eventually became the library director at the Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. I witnessed how judges, lawyers and government executives relied on her ability to locate the resources and make them available as well as how that impacted our community and outcomes.
How do you think this might change the world?
OverDrive’s vision is for “A World Enlightened by Reading.” Illiteracy is a global challenge. The opportunity to contribute to providing equity of access and equity of opportunity begins in our schools, public libraries and universities and extends into every home. OverDrive’s mission includes innovating with digital content and technology to help reduce the digital divide, and to improve access to books and information.
I serve on a population health committee for University Hospitals in Northeast Ohio. Supporting the work of community literacy programs with access to books, tutors and supplemental materials is how we seek to provide tools for change.
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?
There are few drawbacks or risks to providing access to books and from promoting reading. We have witnessed pushback from a small segment in the publishing and bookselling community who do not fully appreciate the commercial upside for their commercial interests resulting from library digital lending collections.
When public library catalogs offer readers the ability to discover, sample and potentially borrow an ebook from their public library, it results in proven value to the author, publisher and bookseller. Libraries purchase the digital editions they lend which have been a reliable and growing source of revenue for the author and publisher. The promotion, discovery, brand support and social and community engagement with the library’s digital books produce more books sold at retail (in print and digital). A cross-industry research project has been ongoing at PanoramaProject.org which aligns with study and survey findings validating the value for all stakeholders when libraries have reasonable and flexible purchase models to develop robust digital collections.
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.)
1. Surround yourself with top talent. Success requires a great team. Human capital is the most valuable asset for any project or enterprise. As an avid reader I have learned from the stories and successes of numerous top leaders in tech and business. A local Northeast Ohio example is Morton Mandel, a co-founder of Premier Industries and major philanthropist. In his memoir, “It’s all about Who,” he reports his success based on ensuring his team was led by “A” players and how he judged talent. Specific domain expertise in the market segment of the business was less important to him than intellectual capacity, attitude and other attributes to lead a business. At OverDrive I am extraordinarily proud to be working alongside an amazing leadership team of passionate, innovative all-stars.
2. Solve a problem or help overcome a pain point. Over the years I have experienced many product releases and app launches and also launched major partnerships. Each had great promise for the business. The results that followed in many cases were disappointing. The strategy to prioritize in most cases is solving a problem. In 2003, OverDrive worked with the Cleveland Public Library to introduce to the general public the ability to borrow and download a popular ebook to read offline on a screen or mobile device. We started to see modest interest and growth for the product and service. While working closely with public librarians launching their new digital book services with our new OverDrive app, almost every librarian had a problem for us to address as part of the service. The most significant one was extending our apps and platform to support download audiobooks for readers of all ages to use offline. It wasn’t prompted by large patron demand for digital audiobooks, but from operational issues and problems public librarians were reporting on for lending CD audiobooks. I quickly learned the audiobook market was dominated by adult fiction with the average title comprised of approximately nine hours of audio. At this time, CD audiobooks in libraries were shelved in a hard-shell case that contained up to 20 individual CDs. Each CD was about 70 minutes of listening time, and compatible with CD players found in most cars as well as other Sony Walkman type mobile players. Issues with librarians lending, patrons returning and then librarians reshelving each CD audiobook title requires time as well as checking each case and all the CDs. It still is common practice today that librarians each morning open the return book drop boxes to a flood of CD audiobook cases spilling out. Before each title can be reshelved, a librarian or page needs to open each then review that all CDs in the case. If one disk is missing from a 10 CD title — or scratched or damaged –it is unusable for lending. If only OverDrive could add to its digital book lending service support for downloading an audiobook! We added this service in 2004 and it immediately resulted in libraries all over the country adding OverDrive to their library service. We were helping solve a problem for librarians. This was more valuable than a shiny new app or great PR for our newest tech.
3. Play long ball… It’s a marathon. To achieve your goal, set expectations for your business plan that include a timeline with starts and stops, disappointments, missed opportunities, the need for more funding and the potential to change your plan mid-stream to meet opportunities that unfold. OverDrive released a series of 10–15 digital book products, services, online marketplaces and apps, and tried a variety of market segments. Each product or service resulted in incremental advances in our technology, opened a new publishing relationship or provided an opportunity to apply our experience to a new market. Persistence, an entrepreneurial spirit and preparing for worst can keep a venture growing and elevating it to the next level.
4. Select the tech stack carefully and invest in scalable solution architectures. To be successful, believe, plan and invest to support broad adoption of your product or service. In 2000 we launched our B2B digital media distribution platform that today is OverDrive Marketplace, the leading supplier of ebooks, audiobooks, magazine, video and media to a global network of libraries and schools. In launching our platform to serve publishers, retail bookstores, and eventually schools and libraries, one thing was for certain: that everything we knew about electronic books from the 1990s and before would completely change. I asked OverDrive’s CTO to design the platform with one key request. I stated I did not know what the digital book file formats would be in the future, what the commercial content licensing models would look like, and other key components that would drive the business. So I asked him to engineer our platform that one day might accommodate a variety of (at the time) futuristic business models. We needed support for how access to content could be managed and licensed, the ability to operate on every major operating system, support for every language and currency as well as the ability to integrate with potentially thousands of publishing partners, web services and 3rd party solutions.
5. Be creative. While there are countless apps and digital or mobile services entering the market, I know we are still at early stages of how technology will change and improve lives. The brainstorming sessions I have had with our team, our publishing partners and hundreds of librarians have resulted in ideas and innovations that can impact inequities of opportunities for all. If you are passionate about a cause, do your homework and understand the pain points that frustrate those already committed to the mission. From committees I serve on for healthcare, education and literacy, I often find myself and others exploring ideas that may begin with someone stating, “wouldn’t it be great if we could (take this action) to (solve/change/improve)________?” These are not moonshot conversations, although may also result in creative solutions to real issues with a phased approach. Don’t dismiss ideas you are not comfortable with or less informed. For a great book on the power of this process, read “Think Again” by Adam Grant.
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?
There are few more satisfying and rewarding activities a young person can engage in (your personal ROI) than the “gift of giving.” I have witnessed and shared in the pride of countless coworkers, public librarians and educators, literacy coaches and community volunteers to know the payback for being part of a mission-based entity. This doesn’t require starting any new venture, new tech or creating a program. Ask yourself what moves you. Find the cause that aligns with your passion to leave the world a better place because of your involvement, whether it’s part of your career or as a volunteer.
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. 🙂
The next mayor of New York City (most likely Eric Adams). As the incoming executive charged with improving the lives of all citizens in the nation’s largest city, he has an unprecedented set of challenges and opportunities. I would want to use this meal with the incoming mayor to share the population health data on how investing in literacy for all citizens needs to be a priority. It is proven that investments in early childhood literacy, reading by 3rd grade, English language learning, financial literacy, healthcare literacy, etc. have a direct and monumental impact on the welfare, career, safety and community outcomes.
He needs to elevate the importance of funding and empowering every public library, each school and community center to hire and support school librarians, public librarians, literacy and English language learning specialist in each New York neighborhood. This is a transformational opportunity for New York City to lead the nation in how to invest in employing reading experts at every institution, and how to provide them funding to be successful.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Our corporate website, company.overdrive.com, provides access to news, updates, and events that span our activities with authors, publishers, public libraries, schools, academic and corporate partners. I am also actively sharing news and insights at linkedin.com/in/stevepotash/ and @OverDriveSteve.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Steve Potash of OverDrive On How Their Technology Will Make An Important… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.