1st Tuesday Recap: Rick Olson, ’10 MBA

In his 39 years at The Toro Company, Rick Olson, ’10 MBA, has seen a lot of changes. But, as he shared at Minnesota Carlson’s 1st Tuesday, the current moment of technological innovation is the most exciting yet.

Olson, the company’s CEO and chairman of the board, spoke with Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Farrell, discussing innovation amid a changing business environment and the importance of strong company culture.

“I know people are worried about the future of business, but I think it’s the most exciting time, certainly in my lifetime, right now, and that’s especially driven by the technology innovations,” Olson said.

Toro makes a wide range of products for the outdoor environment, from consumer and commercial lawn mowers, to underground construction equipment, to golf course irrigation systems. Olson shared how the business is being transformed by artificial intelligence (AI).

“We’re extremely excited about AI,” he said. “We’re making use of AI extensively to dramatically improve productivity. … For some of our key processes like product innovation, customer support, and so forth, we’re creating internal custom agents to be able to help our team do those jobs better. And the external side is, to me, even more exciting because we have the ability to bring solutions to our customers and allow them to do things that they’ve never been able to do before.”

Olson also discussed how Toro is introducing robotics into its products, such as its fully autonomous fairway mower for golf courses. “For our professional customers, [we’re interested in] anything we can do that addresses productivity, and robotics is kind of the ultimate,” he said.

Though Toro is adapting to many changes, Olson said one important constant is the company’s culture.

“Culture is why I’m at The Toro Company after 39 years,” he said. “We have a culture of excellence that really is the balance between a pure performance focus and a people focus, and we believe that that creates the greatest value for all of our constituents.”

Farrell closed out the conversation by asking Olson what advice he’d give to Minnesota Carlson students who will be entering the workforce amid all the changes they discussed.

“[My advice is] get out there and work on solutions to some of the problems that you’re reading about. You’re going to be the solution,” Olson said. “Soak up the learning that you have at the University, and it will help you to be a problem-solver that will carry us into the future.”

1st Tuesday returns in December with Gunjan Kedia, CEO of U.S. Bancorp. For more details, see the registration information.