Bill Kerr: Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host Bill Kerr. This episode is one of a series of special dispatches on the sweeping effect that Covid-19 is having on society, the economy, and the future of work. In addition to our regular podcast episodes, we’ll be bringing you interviews with business leaders, policy makers, and leading scholars on the coronavirus. Covid-19 has triggered a virtual mass migration to video. Already ubiquitous before the pandemic, businesses and society have shifted even more of their communication, collaboration, and consumption to the medium. Brightcove supplies many of the elements of the video infrastructure—from enterprise platforms to entertainment. How has the coronavirus changed the way businesses use video? What skills are in demand as a result? And what does that mean for our workforce development? I’m joined today by Brightcove CEO, Jeff Ray. Prior to joining Brightcove in 2018, Jeff held executive positions in a number of software and professional service companies. He’s going to talk with us about the effects Covid is having on the supply and demand sides of his business, the increasing popularity of virtual events, and also the long-run view of video as a core business tool. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff.

Jeff Ray: Thanks, Bill. Good to be with you.

Kerr: Jeff, obviously video is all around us, but the infrastructure and markets here are a bit complex. For listeners who are a bit less familiar with Brightcove, why don’t you begin by telling us a little bit about the company, its products, and some of the customers you serve?

Ray: Sure. Brightcove is all 100 percent video over the web, since its inception in the early 2000s, back when video on the web was five or six seconds of 10-frame-per-second videos that were very, very cloudy and hard to see. The founding team just had a very strong vision that video would be the primary content over the web. And, in fact, it is far and away the largest piece of content over the web and continues to grow. So that singular purpose put an awful lot of emphasis on building really what we call “media-quality video.” The early adopters, of course, were big media companies and regional broadcasters, and they demanded broadcast-grade video technology. So from the very beginning, as a software company, we invested in a platform that would be highly secure, handle virtually anything that’s thrown at it, scale very, very large and broad, and just provide for that really high-quality experience that people just expect on broadcast.

Kerr: There’s no surprise that demand for video services has been spiking during the pandemic. Can you break it down for us in terms of the patterns you’re seeing in terms of what consumer and enterprise uses really have gone up over the last six months?

Ray: Well, both are skyrocketing, of course. We publish something called the Global Video Index. Anyone can go to our website and download it. Every quarter, we tap into literally hundreds of sources around the world, and consolidate that, and report on what we see. So for anyone who really wants to geek out on it, I suggest you go to the Global Video Index. Most recently, what we’ve reported is that, year to date, enterprises are seeing usage up by 132 percent. The biggest growth is in smartphone—smartphone usage is up 216 percent, but content on the smartphone is also up. So in other words, if someone was watching one or two minutes of content before, that has doubled. And content time is up now 465 percent on smartphones. Computers tend to be the primary viewing technology, with about two-thirds of the viewers viewing content on computers. But smartphones are far and away the fastest growing, and that’s up to 32 percent.

Kerr: Okay. I know this is more of a backward-looking report, but I want to stay with my listening geeks out there, as you described it. Would you be able to say anything about education? And as we see schools starting to reopen, will you expect a kind of a further surge in some of those categories, compared to summer months?

Ray: Oh, education, obviously, certainly has a target on it, and we’re seeing that in the news. And we witness that, also. Our technology is not targeted for education, but it is used extensively. And so we’ve certainly seen that usage go up, too. I think that the challenge, higher ed has always been pretty good at it. There have been great content providers and technology platforms for many years, and the higher-ed institutions have done a nice job of pivoting to that. But the stress really is on secondary public school, local schools, where the school districts simply don’t have the infrastructure and the expertise, and they’re struggling to keep up. The technology is there, their ability to figure out how to use it is really being challenged. Then there are those who are doing a great job. New South Wales in Australia uses our technology to connect over 2,200 schools. They’ve been riding through this very, very well. They didn’t anticipate it, but they had some real strong forethought into how best to use technology to get through this. I think, what I’m most concerned about for schools is the fact that there is still a digital divide—that not everyone in this country has access to broadband—and we, I think, as a country need to address and confront that. Everybody should be able to access great video content from home.

Kerr: Yeah, we agree with you on that point about the digital divide. Certainly some of the technological advances that you help enable can reduce the requirements, even with the existing infrastructure connections that people have. Jeff, let me pull you back from the schools, which are obviously very important and very of this moment as we record an early September. But think more about just the more typical business that’s out there. And they are looking to either adopt video use for the first time or ramp up what’s currently a pretty small dependency on the mechanism. Can you tell us like how you walk them through … what do you have to do to enable this process? And does this affect anything in terms of how you’re managing this internally, compared to other ways like a website that they may have been trying to reach out?

Ray: Well, Bill, we see this Covid crisis has brought about what we’re calling video’s evolutionary moment. There has been this natural growth and migration to video over the web because it is an ideal way for people to communicate. And people have been trying to figure out how to communicate for millennia. So we don’t see this as revolutionary; it’s evolutionary, because it’s only natural. Covid is compressing this. And so I think the first thing we see in businesses is a heightened sense of urgency. Something that might’ve been an interesting project for next quarter, for next year, is now absolutely needed, in some cases literally for the survival of the business. So our first advice is just jump in, don’t be afraid. We also see that video is a journey. No one gets it right at the beginning. They learn, they grow, and we do our best to help them as they move along in that journey. Companies that do well focus on the viewers and the audience. Just as great companies focus on their customers, so should the company start by saying, what viewers are we trying to reach? What is important to them? And how best can we do that? Quite frankly, if they put that first, just as they do with their goods and services, they will be successful. We’re also just blown away by how creative and innovative businesses are. I think the first thing we saw that really reached a crisis was live events. Obviously, everybody started canceling live events in March, as did we. We hold a big annual customer event, and we had to cancel that. So there’s just been this incredible pivot to virtual events using live-streaming video. What’s fascinating about that is that the most advanced companies are not just simply trying to stand up a two- or three-day event as a live-streaming event. They’re having great success with it, but they’re actually taking full advantage of video that broadcasters have had for years. There’s something called OTT, or over the top. If you’re using Netflix or Hulu, you’re using an OTT service. Companies are now standing up their own versions of Netflix and Hulu. What’s really cool about that is, you can still have that two- or three-day live event using live-streaming technology like ours. But instead of having people get on a plane and go home, you can maintain that relationship by standing up your own channels and continuing to publish content. We’ve done that the same with our viewers. And we’re constantly adding new content to our channel. So it allows companies to maintain an ongoing relationship with viewers that transcends that two- or three-day event. Fortune 1000 customers spend 1 percent to 3 percent of revenues on events. So this is really mission critical for them.

Kerr: Yeah. As you think about this and reflecting internally at Brightcove, and also with the organizations you’re serving, the way you say you got to put the customer or the viewer first in this means that it’s probably not delegated just to the IT department or someone that’s about channel implementation. Instead, I’m imagining it’s a complex set of people that need to be around the table. What kind of functional areas, or who sits around that table, do you think, that help video be at its best?

Ray: As customers go through their journey, typically they’ll pull in marketing, because marketing typically owns events, anyway. But also there’s a key role for HR. For example, some of our customers are establishing their own channels, once again, using our technology to connect with their employees and stakeholders. For example, Wendy’s reaches out to 40,000 mobile workers who all use mobile devices on food safety during this Covid time. So it’s not just something that’s done in marketing. It’s something that HR definitely plays a role in, also, as does sales. Companies do need someone who is good at digital marketing. There should be a digital marketing officer, and that individual will understand the power of video and the need to have a video. What’s very cool is you can do this with a very, very small team of people. Two or three people can deliver amazing amounts of content. And it’s also a very, very exciting job for people. The typical age is under 30 of people who provide this and help with this, and they have incredible creativity and initiative and energy. And it’s very exciting to see the impact that they’re having on companies.

Kerr: I love that you’re bringing HR into this. And let me go back to something that you said, which is a refrain that we’ve had or heard in several settings—that Covid-19 on many forms with respect to technology and remote work and so forth is accelerating a trend that was already there. So something that may have been for 2030s, more likely to come 2025 or 2023 as a consequence—or even 2020—as a consequence of the Covid-19 and the implications that it has had for business. So in that, I’d like to break that into a couple of questions. One is specifically around talent. Are there enough people that know how to stay up with this accelerating trend in your space around video technologies, and how difficult is it for someone to close the talent gap? Then second, are there other things that you have been engaged in that really is something that’s brand new? Like, so it’s not just about accelerating an existing trend; it’s something that you hadn’t really had on the roadmap prior to the pandemic.

Ray: Sure. In terms of talent, I wouldn’t let people use that as an excuse or a reason to delay getting started. The technologies have been around for a long time. Our technology has been around for 15 years. Granted, our code base today is very different from what it was then. But there’s incredible expertise and talent out there that helps make this happen. The key element in this is content. And the content rests already inside businesses. It’s just revealing that content. So a very, very small video production crew can do amazing things. There are also agents—just about every digital marketing agency has great talent that can help people kind of get started, make that jumpstart, as they build out their own team. So I just don’t see talent as a restraint. As we work with customers—and we work with artists and musicians, too, because they’re trying to figure out how to stand up live concerts over video—they don’t understand this. And yet, with a very, very small production team, they can do amazing things and punch above their weight. So I wouldn’t let talent be an excuse. Seek out the content within your enterprise. It’s there, you already have it. Ask the people who are interested in learning and growing into this—they will raise their hands and jump in, they’re not afraid of this. Again, there are great agencies and experts, organizations like us, that help with that. We have our own professional services organization that helps companies get started. But what we find is, once they get going, there’s no turning back. They just take it, it builds, and it grows. In terms of new things, I think that the most impressive thing that we’ve seen is the profound growth of, again, what I called OTT. Over the last year, we’ve launched three new products—more products than we had in the prior 10 years. And the OTT product is the one, it’s called Beacon, that’s getting the most attention, because everyone is following this path of saying, “Look, we just don’t want to do a live event or deal with this one-time issue. We actually want to establish an ongoing relationship.” I think of the Tribeca Film Festival. It was born out of the ashes of 9/11, and the whole intent was to introduce new artists, new directors, new writers in film to the community. Obviously that all got shut down at the beginning of the year. They had to cancel that. They partnered with Walmart and IMAX and AT&T to do live streaming of these films in parking lots of 160 Walmarts across the country. It’s our technology coupled with great, great people that are making that possible. So, in fact, they’re finding the Covid is helping them eliminate barriers, not actually throw up bigger barriers.

Kerr: That’s fascinating. Let me maybe dwell on a question about stickiness here. I’ve had conversations with several executives that look at trends—even when the trends are very beneficial for their organizations at that moment—and ask themselves, “Are we over-indexing on what is the rising tide at the moment?” But even if it stays high, it may not be quite as high as it is right now. And how do we plan for that? In your space with Brightcove and the video-streaming business, how do you think about the scenario after we hopefully have a vaccine, and the world goes back into something that’s not just the new normal as we currently know, but the newer-newer normal that will be in two years’ time or ideally even in sooner? Is there a worry that any of this sort of push toward these new video products will then retreat?

Ray: Yeah, certainly the urgency will subside. That’s to be expected. People will go back to things that they’re more comfortable with. But as I’ve talked to experts and customers and partners, they think that there are just life lessons being learned in this where we will not turn back. As I said, live events are now virtual. It’s at least a year before people start feeling comfortable traveling again, even if we find a provable vaccine by the end of this year, there’s just going to be that long delay. So companies have to be pragmatic enough to understand that they’re going to have to live with this for a while. What will come out of this—for example, for events—is hybrid. And what the smart people are telling me is that, yes, there will still be those live events. It’s still the best way to promote your brand to your most loyal fans. It’s still the best way to collaborate. But they will always have live channels established with lots and lots of video content to stand up, to connect. That will go beyond the live event. That’s an example of hybrid. I think about one of our customers that you may never have heard of—FreightWaves. They actually are the largest producer of content for the freight industry. They’re kind of like the Bloomberg of freight. The global freight industry is bigger than the global finance and insurance industry. They had to revert to align with that. Their normal in-house event has 2,500 participants, 2,500 people that come to the event. Their live event had 92,000 streaming viewers, 92,000. They stood up over 5 million minutes of streaming content over three days. Their CEO has told me, “We’re never going back. There will be live events, but we have reached so many more people than we ever expected as a result of this, that there will be no turning back for us.”

Kerr: I’ve heard a similar refrain with everything on this podcast, from a co-working facility’s virtual events to academic conferences. The reach and even the capacity to reach particular individuals and groups that would normally not be able to attend the live events has been very impactful for how organizations think about this. Jeff, there’s another clear big trend about the future of work that we think Covid-19 has added a little bit more fuel onto what was already a fire that was burning brighter and brighter, and that’s in sort of gig work or contract labor’s engagement in companies. It strikes me that this video space is one that could connect well with freelance work. Is that something that you see? And is there kind of a class of workers that are out there that are helping to put Brightcove’s products into new companies or work on some of the themes?

Ray: Yeah, certainly the rise of contractors and gig workers is spiking as people look for talent. And all politics is local, all businesses local. If you are in India, in Mumbai, you want to work with somebody local in Mumbai to help you with that. And so, yes, those communities are very, very robust and growing. Typically it starts when someone locates a local agency to kind of get started. And that agency will typically tap into local freelance and gig worker talent to help through that. Then as companies experience this, a lot of them say, we’re just going to in-source this. The cost of talent is not that high and again, and one or two people can do the job of many more. Again, because of the power of scale of video.

Kerr: Jeff, I’d love to maybe wrap up this podcast by turning just internally to how you have managed and led Brightcove during the pandemic, because we have a lot of business leaders that are always looking to understand how other people have approached the crisis. And I think as important, now that we are soon to be six months or longer after the crisis first hit, how are you thinking about using the fall ahead? With the likelihood that there’s going to be some second waves and that we’re not back to full travel and so forth, what’s been sort of your philosophy internally over the last six months? And then as important, what’s on your horizon as the big things to accomplish in the next few months ahead?

Ray: Well, this certainly hit, I think it became a reality for us the same time it did for everyone else in late February, early March, when we realized that this crisis was not going to go away, and it was only going to get bigger. We didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. And I’ll tell you, today I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But we did know that we needed to have decision-making priorities. How would we handle problems and issues as they come and hit us in the face? Because we can’t predict what will happen. So we established three rules by which we would make all of our decisions. Number one, protect our employees. More than anything else, we have to protect the health and safety of our employees. Number two, protect the cash flows of the business. If the cash continues to come in, we can make payroll, we can continue to invest in technology. Then number three, don’t make a decision in the heat of the moment that will be shortsighted and will ultimately hurt our ability to deliver good, long-term profitable growth. So as all of those various crises that have hit us and issues and surprises, we’ve gone back to those three priorities, and they’ve served us well. And we’re just going to keep doing that. Certainly we did what everyone else did. We said we must work from home. We had a global work-from-home day. It worked very, very well. We only had one lab in Europe that struggled with that, and it was because of the nature of how they test devices that view video. So we had to come up with a workaround for them. But everyone else was able to work from home. We’ve given stipends to people, kind of an open checkbook, that allows them to go out and acquire technology or furniture to make it a little bit easier for them to work from home. We are in constant contact. We have weekly video conversations with the global VPs. We have monthly town hall meetings—all, of course, on video with all of our employees—just to maintain a high level of connection and communication. We also are constantly surveying our employees to see how they’re feeling and doing. In fact, back in July, when we made the call to keep the offices closed through the end of this year, we asked employees how they were feeling about coming back into the office. What was interesting was they were not as concerned about coming into the office. They felt that there are ways to maintain some amount of health and safety inside the office. Their big concern was transit. Sixty-two percent of our employees rely on mass transit. They’re in Boston, New York, London, Singapore, Tokyo, major cities like Sydney, and they rely on mass transit. That was their number-one fear, and that’s why we decided not to reopen our offices, even though we felt we could kind of limp along with a small number of people in the offices. I think for me, more than anything else, Bill, is I am blown away by the resilience of our employees, by their ability to figure out how to get things done in spite of this. How they’re just overcoming challenges every day. I’ll tell you a quick story that really exemplifies it. I was having a video chat with our Indian employees recently, and one of them said, “I’ve got to get off the phone, the food truck is here.” And he jumped off the line. And I asked everyone else, what was that all about? They said, “Well, in his city, no one is allowed to leave their homes. So every week, once a week, a big truck comes to each neighborhood loaded down with groceries, and people go out and they buy the groceries that they need for the week.” And that’s that. If you miss that, you’re not going to have any groceries for the next week and there’s no complaining, no whining about it. They just do it. I see that with our customers and employees, too. The resilience, the ability to get things done, the creativity of people, I think that really is what binds us around the world.

Kerr: Thank you, Jeff, for that. That’s a great way for us to end. Jeff Ray is the CEO of Brightcove. We appreciate him coming on the podcast today to talk about where the company is, how it has experienced a dramatic growth in business over the last six months and is poised for even more in the future. Thanks, Jeff.

Ray: Thank you, Bill. Stay safe.

Kerr: You, too.

Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast. To find out more information about our project on the future of work and for more information on the coronavirus’s impact, visit our website at hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/ and sign up for our newsletter.