Vanderbilt School of Engineering alumnus David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin and former senior vice president at Amazon, urged students during a packed-house campus event on Sept. 18 to “be curious” and become proficient in the use of artificial intelligence so they can remain competitive in the workforce.
In conversation with Krish Roy, the Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Dean of Engineering and University Distinguished Professor, Limp discussed Vanderbilt’s influence—how the university motivated him to be curious and take chances. He also said he still holds on to the engineering principles he learned in college.
“I’ve always had an amazing affinity with this school,” said Limp, who received the School of Engineering’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018. “There’s a culture of collegiate-ness here that you don’t see elsewhere. And the thing I really love about the engineering school, which you don’t see as much, is the … belief in the fundamentals of engineering principles.”
Before joining Blue Origin in 2022, Limp spent more than 30 years in consumer electronics. Fourteen of those were as a senior executive at Amazon, where he helped launch the company’s Alexa voice assistant and other devices and services.
Now, he is leading Blue Origin’s work to remain competitive among other startups that are racing to develop low-cost, reusable rockets that are safe enough to ferry humans and other materials to space and back again.
When Limp was first offered the job at Blue Origin, he told the audience he turned it down. But curiosity was part of the reason he eventually accepted. He told students they shouldn’t be afraid to try something different—to take chances.
“As you navigate your career, you want to try things, and new things,” he said.
Limp said that also means staying relevant when it comes to new technology such as AI, because there will be those in the workforce who don’t want to “reteach” themselves to be proficient with it.
“You need to be world experts on how AI can be relevant for the field you’re getting a degree in,” Limp said. “There will be a lot of people out in the workforce that don’t want to retrain themselves and they’ll retire early. As a hiring manager, I’m going to look at you and go, wow, you’re already relevant. I don’t have to train you in these new tools. I want you at my company.”
Limp added, “I over-index on hiring people that are curious. There are a lot of people that want to be stagnant in their life; they just don’t want to keep learning. The people that keep learning are right more often. And I will pay almost anything for people that are right a lot. It’s hard to understand what the secrets are to being right a lot, but one of them, I’m sure, is being curious.”