Building a Global Community

Chapter 2: Pioneering Virtual Instrumentation

After spending 10 years building its reputation for innovation, leadership, and quality, the National Instruments team deeply understood its corporate values and mission. Its founders created a culture that cherished a flat management structure, respected people rather than titles, emphasized customer success, and realized the merit of hard work rather than political maneuvering. This company, birthed by three industrious entrepreneurs who refused to let any hardship derail their dreams, had a solid foundation and a clear direction. The company used momentum fueled by the success of its GPIB interface products to survey the engineers and scientists that composed its customer base. It dedicated diverse resources to explore the concept that would define its market progression during the next decade. That vision - virtual instrumentation - would change both the way scientific and engineering professionals approached their work and the way NI practiced its business.

In 1986, NI introduced LabVIEW (Lab Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench), a product that epitomized the company's desire to initiate, launch, and manage innovative products that carry the potential to change the world. Despite their ambitious spirit, nearly no one on the team that researched and debuted the product realized how it would impact others' lives. For employees involved with the project, the founders' enthusiasm for LabVIEW conveyed a sense of duty to customer success. Their product contributions were not simply a way to earn a paycheck. They felt personal responsibility and passion for giving engineers and scientists the ability to affect lives.

NI reached the milestone of 100 employees in 1986, with the same open, communal atmosphere that helped turn a great idea into a thriving business. Ongoing professional interaction bred meaningful social gatherings. Celebrations of achievement, no matter how large or small, made employees feel appreciated and that their contributions were worthwhile. "Work hard," said NI founders in the beginning, "and then let's have some fun."

Relying on its track record of domestic operational and administrative success, NI opened its first international branch in Tokyo, Japan in 1987. The move was a precursor to the major international expansion that occurred in the early 1990s. Before this expansion, however, company management made a carefully executed decision that redefined its sales operations. The 1988 decision to move from representative distribution to direct sales in the United States and Europe underscored the company's responsibility for fully promoting its products and interacting directly with customers. It further demonstrated the company's commitment to provide challenging, long-term careers to its employees.

Growing as a Family
As the company grew, NI consistently scheduled all-hands gatherings to communicate key messages and motivate employees to excel. These events, often held in a nearby church, sometimes resembled old-school revivals and featured the corporate mission of NI. After growing into nearly the entire building on Technology Boulevard (by then 56,000 sq ft), the company moved to its spectacular 136,095 sq ft space at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway in 1990 and purchased the building in 1991. With beautiful views of the well-known Loop 360 bridge and Lake Austin, "Silicon Hills - Bridge Point" represented a coup for a company accustomed to renting, rather than buying, its offices. That same year, NI received its first patent for LabVIEW graphical programming software.

In 1991, NI introduced the National Instruments Alliance Partner program, a worldwide organization of third-party developers, systems integrators, and consultants. In the next year, the company offered Signal Conditioning eXtensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) that expand PC signal-processing capabilities. In 1993, NI surpassed $100 million in annual sales. During the early 1990s, the company continued to champion new ventures while never forgetting the merit of incremental progress.

Employees enjoyed National Instruments prosperity with the sense that the organization lacked boundaries. National Instruments founders and management worked hard to keep barriers at bay, to encourage employees to step outside perceived roles, and to constantly act to promote personal and corporate growth. "We've done it," an employee might say of a product's success. "Now, let's do it better."

It was with this attitude that NI employees welcomed 1994. Soon, NI adopted credit card-sized hardware for laptop computers that brought portability to field applications. Also that year, an industrious employee developed and maintained natinst.com, the company's first Web page. Finally, during 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, the 72-acre North Mopac headquarters facility where most corporate operations now reside.

The campus environment was user-friendly - dedicated workout spaces, including basketball and volleyball courts and a campus-wide walking course; and hundreds of windows, creating a light, open cubicle atmosphere. Indeed, those who planned the new campus focused on creating a working environment where hard-walled offices are few and where all interact on the same playing field. Even Dr. T works in his own standard cubicle along side other NI employees.

During this time period, NI furthered its commitment to the community in which the company's headquarters operate. It continued financial programs that match employee contributions to social service organizations they are passionate about. It encouraged participation in youth programs that promote personal growth, entrepreneurship, and scholarship. It fostered arts programs that focus on education and culture. It emphasized educational programs that advance science, mathematics, and engineering. To this day, the company has retained this commitment to uphold its duty as a corporate citizen.

It may have seemed like an instant for some, a lengthy journey for others. When another year had passed, and 1994 ended, NI founders and staff recognized another fascinating era of positive accomplishment, another vital string of amazing success stories. The company noticed that engineers and scientists had begun using its products in wonderful - even if unintended - ways. After pondering these initiatives, NI understood that more applications than ever anticipated lay in its future.

LabVIEW and DAQ Change an Industry
In 1986, NI capitalized on more than two years of software development by launching LabVIEW 1.0 for the popular Apple Macintosh. Often described as a cornerstone of NI success, LabVIEW gives engineers and scientists the ability to program graphically by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. An intuitive environment that empowers users while greatly improving their productivity, LabVIEW, "fathered" by cofounder Kodosky, then exemplified and now characterizes the company's youthful, soulful energy. It interfaced tightly and powerfully with the methods and minds of engineers and scientists.

While initially aiming to produce a $300 computer-based product that would automate instrumentation, the founding trio eventually launched LabVIEW as a $2,000 Macintosh-based programming language that acquired, analyzed, and presented data. In 1987, the company introduced LabWindows, a DOS-based integrated environment for C and BASIC that provided graphical user interface capabilities similar to those of LabVIEW. By 1990, NI had debuted LabVIEW 2.0 and LabWindows 2.0. Two years later, the company released LabVIEW for Windows-based PCs and UNIX workstations, making the technology broadly available and reaching more engineers. Subsequently, LabVIEW received bountiful and beneficial trade-press coverage. The technology deserved its attention - it changed the way engineers and scientists made measurements. In 1993, NI provided LabWindows/CVI for C/C++ programmers, and three years later, customer adoption of LabVIEW drew graphical programming into industrial automation applications.

Back in the late 1980s, NI also introduced its first plug-in measurement data acquisition (DAQ) boards for the Macintosh (1987) and the PC (1988). With the tight integration of these ISA and NuBus-based DAQ devices to LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI, customers could create PC-based measurement systems at a lower cost. Through the 1990s, NI delivered its DAQ boards on the latest PC buses, including the highest-performance PCI and PXI interfaces, ensuring customers could migrate systems to new PC technology with complete reuse of their software programs.

During this period, with the simultaneous introduction of LabVIEW and more advanced DAQ boards, engineers and scientists could replace expensive, fixed-function, vendor-defined instruments. With customer-defined, PC-based systems to acquire, analyze, and present data at a lower cost that provided greater flexibility and productivity.

Building a Global Company
NI opened its first international branch in Japan in 1987 and gradually began greater expansion. In 1988, after building its direct sales operations in the United States, NI began the proliferation of international outposts in earnest. By 1991, many more branches began to spring up across the European continent, and by 1994, this expansive trend continued in Asia. These small but vitally important offices strived to offer enhanced international services through language compatibility for key products and enhanced localization of user applications. Most importantly, employees in these offices have committed themselves to maintaining the company's dedication to innovation, growth, and leadership.

Today, NI not only has 21 offices in Europe and 12 offices in the Asia/Pacific region, but it also runs offices in the Americas, Middle East, and Africa. In addition, NI markets products through distributors in 19 other countries, including Iceland, Turkey, and Ecuador. These international stories of achievement demonstrate how the company values economic and cultural diversity, and how it has spread its vision of virtual instrumentation to every corner of the world.

NI Applies Direct Sales Model
After debuting LabVIEW 1.0 for the Macintosh and DOS-based LabWindows for the PC, the management team at NI realized it had enjoyed only partial success using sales representatives to distribute its products. In 1988, management decided the company must quickly adopt an approach by which salespeople captured the ambitious spirit of NI employees and products. Manufacturer representatives did not have the skills to demonstrate NI software and virtual instrumentation, nor did they share the company's cultural values and commitment to customer success. During customer visits, new NI direct sales engineers carried and demonstrated LabVIEW and LabWindows software for clients, and ultimately not only knew, but also lived, the NI culture in the field and with customers.

The debut of the NI direct sales model in the United States proceeded, with individual Austin-based sales engineers following up on leads in several regions. European implementation of the direct sales plan, however, required creating self-sufficient branches in unfamiliar territories, building sales staff in countries that presented differing standards for corporate success. Once again, NI employees rose to this challenge, ensuring the progression of a direct sales force that now operates efficiently and vigorously worldwide. Today, hundreds of field engineers work from worldwide locations outside NI Austin headquarters.