MEMBER SPOTLIGHT National Instruments' Business Success Story Provides a Valuable 25-Year Narrative on Partnering for Customer Success MEMBER Spotlight From its inception, National Instruments created an expansive ecosystem that was open to vendors and alive with the excitement of helping end customers solve their science and engineering challenges. Today, partnerships permeate all facets of NI's business strategy. By Genevieve Fraser The genesis of National Instruments (NI) reads like an old-fashioned movie script. Back in 1976, co-founder and now recently retired CEO, James Truchard, PhD, set up shop in his garage and founded a company with two co-workers from the acoustical measurements division at The University of Texas at Austin, where he served as managing director. The trio was frustrated by labor-intensive and inefficient data collection methods, so the three scientists designed a solution-a motherboard built upon the foundation of Q2 * 2017 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE 41