OREANDA-NEWS. October 08, 2015. Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford visited Silicon Valley recently where he had an opportunity to meet with employees at the company’s new Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto to discuss the important role they play in Ford’s future. 

“Everybody understands that to a great extent our future lies in your hands.  If we are going to make this leap from a car and truck company to a mobility company, it is going to require a completely fresh set of eyes in almost everything we do,” said Ford, who was on the West Coast with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder sharing Michigan’s revitalization story with prominent business leaders.

The outreach effort was part of the Business Leaders for Michigan’s Ambassadors Program, which aims to engage business leaders who lived, worked or graduated from school in Michigan to share the progress being made to secure the state’s future.

Ford said it is important to create advanced technology and new business models to address the mobility challenges facing people around the world.  

"It’s a great opportunity to define what it means to make people’s lives better,” he said. “We need to give people back their most precious asset, which is time, and free them up to move around urban areas.”

He said it’s vital that employees throughout the world communicate with one another and embrace a culture of innovation. 

“I think the most important thing each of us can do is be curious and open-minded and recognize that we don’t have all the answers,” he said. “We have to make people understand how important this work is, how exciting it is, and how it can and will shape our future.”

Equally as important is learning how to deal with failure, he said.

“We need to learn from failure, what went well and what didn’t go well, and move on,” he said. “That way of thinking is different for us and our culture, but I think there’s widespread recognition that it needs to happen.” 

Dr. Ken Washington, vice president, Research and Advanced Engineering, agrees.  

“Bill’s message on being open-minded and learning from failure was exactly spot on. One of the roles we have here in Palo Alto is to learn how to do that and incubate that mindset,” said Washington, who was with Ford in Silicon Valley. “I also agree that communication is key because we’re building a culture here, and we want to do it in a way that spreads the spirit of innovation and experimentation throughout the company.”