The Chip Insider®– Intel’s Woes: Are a “string of accountant CEOs” the Root of the Problem?
Author: G. Dan Hutcheson
Uncover the truth behind Intel's leadership struggles—are accountant CEOs the issue? Read our latest analysis comparing tech and non-tech leaders, with examples from Lip Bu Tan to Lou Gerstner, and see if the real problem lies elsewhere.
As the media-feeding frenzy off Intel’s last earnings call continues, the Silicon Valley Mythology that ‘only technologists can run tech companies’ keeps being repeated as a cause of its woes. The technologist bias is a mythology, as while it continues one can find plenty of great CEOs of technology companies with business, not technology, backgrounds.
This includes Lip Bu Tan, former CEO of Cadence who just resigned from Intel and has an MBA… Lou Gerstner is another, turning around IBM... Jim Morgan is another, turning around Applied Materials… Though not a technologist, he was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Further proof is that one can find far more tech CEOs with technology backgrounds who almost ran or did run their companies into the ground.
As for the “string of accountant CEOs” at Intel, only one really fits the bill of coming up through finance: Bob Swan... Before Swan, all the CEOs had strong technology backgrounds, as can be seen at The Chip History Center. Of the six before Swan, only Otellini had a non-technical education, an MBA. While he did start in finance, he moved over to sales and product management… Paul also lead Intel’s 2005-06 turnaround... Much like today… AMD had passed Intel to become the largest supplier of PC processors… a turnaround as great as Grove’s 1980s exit from memories to focus on the PC processor market. The difference is that Paul never wrote a bestseller. Instead, he is more remembered for passing on Steve Jobs's request to develop an APU for the iPhone down in 2006. The insider story is that Paul went with a separate request from Nokia. At the time, Nokia was by far the dominant supplier of mobile phones. Apple had no position and was still in the midst of its own turnaround. Who would you have gone with?
As for Swan, … Was Bob Swan really the bad one? … What did go wrong under Swan…
“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation” — Don Draper, Mad Men
