Autodesk is creating incentives that spawn vibrant, burgeoning, and highly competitive markets for add-on products, extensions to our product line, and new hardware platforms. This will continue to exponentially expand the armamentarium of tools the designer can apply to create better products and bring them to market faster. Those who attempt to define a Òtotal solutionÓ, or Òcontrol the marketÓ will continue to discover what Autodesk has been teaching them for the last half-decade; that an open system unleashes the talents of tens of thousands of creative people each motivated by their own self-interest, and that their energy and dedication will carry that open system to successes unimagined by those who think they can Òplan for the futureÓ.

Variation, selection; replication, extinction; innovation, competition; itÕs been working for billions of years and it isnÕt going to stop tomorrow.

I think that most great business successes are the result of somebody tripping over an exponential growth curve, driving a spike into it, and holding on for dear life. ThatÕs what weÕre doing now. And thereÕs no sign that our curve is turning back down, or that weÕre losing our grip.

And the beauty of it is, we donÕt have to disappear into a corner and make something new. We wil evolve our way there, product by product, release by release, feature by feature, with the market weÕve created guiding us and everybody else in it toward the best solutions to the problems it faces.

(Walker, 1987, pl. 414); 1988 shareholders meeting; Autodesk; Walker is founder of Autodesk which turned an initial investment of a hundred thousand dollars into more than a bilion in less than eight years.