{"id":23842,"date":"2022-05-31T10:20:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T14:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/industrial-design\/2022\/05\/31\/mark-templeton-wants-you-to-think-outside-the-box\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T12:54:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T16:54:19","slug":"mark-templeton-wants-you-to-think-outside-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/industrial-design\/2022\/05\/31\/mark-templeton-wants-you-to-think-outside-the-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Templeton Wants You To Think Outside the Box"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Story by Brent Winter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

College of Design alumnus Mark Templeton, NC State\u2019s fall 2021 commencement speaker, crowned a storied career several years ago by retiring as CEO of Citrix, a multibillion-dollar software company. So you\u2019d probably never guess that Templeton\u2019s first job fresh out of school was as a draftsman for a sheet metal and roofing company; or that a year and a half after his promotion to the CEO position at Citrix, the company\u2019s board of directors very publicly demoted him for making a critical mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setbacks Always Happen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSetbacks always happen,\u201d Templeton said in his commencement address. \u201cNo one has ever been successful without accumulating scars that hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of his career, Templeton has learned a thing or two about success, setbacks and the power of design thinking, and he shared some of that accumulated wisdom on Dec. 14 with NC State\u2019s most recent crop of graduates, as well as in a recent interview with Designlife<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mark
Mark Templeton \u201975 (center) relaxes with friends while learning forging methods by the furnace.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Templeton said the bachelor\u2019s degree he earned from the School of Design (as the college was then named) in 1975 provided a solid foundation for much of his later success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe education I got at NC State made me a better designer, communicator and critical thinker,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Templeton first enrolled at NC State, he didn\u2019t even want to be a designer; he started off as an engineer. But every day as he walked to his engineering classes, he would pass the School of Design \u2014 and he liked what he saw there: \u201cI\u2019d see students working feverishly, carrying portfolios of work, sketching ideas, building prototypes, creating, innovating and imagining,\u201d he told his commencement audience. \u201cI was green with envy. Intuitively, I wanted to be one of them. I couldn\u2019t really explain why. I just knew.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Templeton transferred into Design and earned his degree in product design, even though he never thought he would be a great design practitioner. <\/strong>\u201cAfter I got my degree, what I learned \u2014 and it took a few years \u2014 is that I had gotten a degree in something even more powerful than product design, and that\u2019s design thinking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to Think Outside the Box<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the tech business, the creative process is critically important because you\u2019re always anticipating customer needs to invent ideas and products that haven\u2019t been imagined before. That\u2019s where Templeton\u2019s NC State education served him well, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe core training at the School of Design was based on the technique of the Bauhaus school, which spends the first two years teaching you how to think outside the box,\u201d Templeton explained. \u201cIt erases the in-the-box training you\u2019ve had through your primary education, and it takes you to a place where can get out of the box, look back at it, reframe the problem and reimagine the solution. Once you\u2019ve acquired that skill, you can defeat the most powerful force in the universe: the force of inertia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NC State is also where Templeton first learned how to survive a setback \u2014 and how to see the value in it \u2014 by participating in design critiques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVery rarely did someone hit it out of the park and have the critique jury say this is the best thing they\u2019d ever seen,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt didn\u2019t work that way. The process was designed to poke holes in your thinking, to get you to think more deeply and innovatively. Sometimes people got upset because they would put everything they had into a presentation, only to see their work torn apart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An older student told Templeton the way to get the most out of design critiques was to make sure you learn something from it that you can apply to your next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat made a big impression on me in terms of my philosophy of life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt turned out to be a very useful philosophy in the tech industry, too. The idea of failing fast really matters. You try a business direction based on some idea; let the market provide the critique; then learn from that, pivot and improve the next time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transforming Citrix<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Templeton
Templeton addresses an audience at a Synergy technology conference in Orlando. Photo by the Fort Lauderdale \/ Sun Sentinel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After Templeton\u2019s demotion from the CEO post at Citrix, he didn\u2019t resign, as many of his well-meaning friends urged him to do. In his statement to the board of directors in which he accepted a lower-level job with the company, he said, \u201cI drove us into this ditch, and I\u2019m going to get us out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went on to do exactly that, which is why the board made him the CEO again less than a year later. In Templeton\u2019s two decades at Citrix, he led the company\u2019s growth from a $15 million business with one product to a global powerhouse with annual revenues of over $3 billion, 100 million users worldwide and 10,000 employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Templeton is still putting his training in design thinking to use as an active board member of both public and private companies, advising entrepreneurial teams from startup to scale-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe NC State idea of Think and Do captures the essence of the design thinking process,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes I tell people that everyone should have a design degree. It sets you intellectually free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n