Successful companies establish cultures that support the evolution of a company to create change. And they do it by learning to fail.

So says Autodesk's vice president for e-business Jeff Drust. He isn't suggesting companies should make a habit of failing. But business managers must be less afraid to make mistakes. Drust's term for it is "fail fast forward". Autodesk has its own experience of failure, he points out. Release 13 of its AutoCAD software was "our most infamous release," he admits. "We got it wrong."

But Autodesk learned from it: "We changed our entire development process as a result. Users demand that we never do that again, and we knew something bad would happen unless we made that change."

Even Autodesk has found e-business challenging, says Drust. Change on the scale demanded by e-business embraces the whole organisation, plus the whole supply chain and reseller network.

And change does not come naturally to people. Drust notes that the only reason railway tracks use a four foot eight and a quarter-inch gauge is that, when you trace it back, the Romans decided this was the right distance to set chariot wheels drawn by two horses walking side by side. No matter how much a technology advances, from chariots to trains, some fundamental things stay the same.

Changing organisations have to welcome new sources of thinking. Autodesk is constantly on the lookout for new people to bring in: "We have a call centre in India. Wherever we find talent now we can use it." Above all, says Drust, you must "hire, promote, develop, reward and retain the people who drive change." That is how Autodesk will meet one of its key goals - to deliver new solutions that help its customers create value.

For more information on the Cambashi Seminar, please email melanie.bradley@cambashi.com