Tuesday, November 5, 2013
In last May's The Atlantic magazine, Intel's then-CEO Paul Otellini confessed to a mistake of historic proportions. Apple had given Intel the chance to be part of the smartphone era, to supply the processor for the first iPhone … and Otellini said no [emphasis and light editing mine]:
"The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do …. At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.
"...while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut. My gut told me to say yes."
That Otellini found the inner calm to publicly admit his mistake – in an article that would be published on his last day as CEO, no less – is a testament to his character. More important, Otellini's admission unburdened his successor, Brian Krzanich, freeing him to steer the company in a new direction.
