cool global BIZ

Part 3: How Chinese Fortune Cookies Have Guided Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett

 

     EVERYONE WANTS TECH innovation to drive their economies, according to former Intel chairman and CEO Craig Barrett.  "It's the topic of every government on the face of the earth," Barrett recently told a crowd of entrepreneurs at the Global Technology Symposium at Stanford University.  On the surface, it seems simple.  You need smart people, R&D investment, and the right environment.  Then why isn't everyone doing it?  You won't find "the formula for success" from the wisest professors or business leaders, Barrett said.  You'll find it in the humble Chinese fortune cookie:

"Craig R. Barrett - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009," by World Economic Forum.

 

FORTUNE NO. 1 (from Chef Chu's in Mountain View, California):  "The world will always accept talent with open arms." 

Talent is education, experience, capability and passion for what you do.  Whether you're a poet or an engineer, the world will welcome you if you have those characteristics, Barrett said.  The orginal business plan for Intel by co-founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore was only 160 words long.  And all it said, according to Barrett, was they thought they had some talent, and they think there's a business in selling integrated circuits.

"Not much has changed," Barrett said.  "Venture capitalists want to see a one-page business plan, and they're really interested more in the talent that they fund than the business that they fund."

Part 2: Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett on Global Innovation, the U.S. Superiority Complex, and Running for Political Office (Not)

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

 

("Intel" by ManWithCamera, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)

 

WE CONTINUE OUR interview with former Intel chairman and CEO Craig Barrett, who retired last year, but who continues to toil on world-changing issues such as innovation, education and technology in emerging countries.  (See Part 1 of interview.)  Barrett also is chair of the Irish Technology Leadership Group, a business network in Silicon Valley and Ireland that hopes to boost Ireland's ailing economy and education.  Intel built a large manufacturing site in Leixlip more than 20 years ago, and Barrett's ancestors hail from Ireland.

CoolGlobalBiz:  At the recent Global Technology Symposium at Stanford, you said that countries must change their business plans to accommodate globalization and all these new capitalists.  But few governments function as well as large, well-run companies.  Can governments take advantage of rapid innovation, or will they screw it up on a global scale?

BARRETT:  If governments attempt to dictate specific actions, they'll screw it up.  Golly, just look at the 2,700-page bill on healthcare reform in the United States.  Does anybody believe we're going to reform healthcare, or just add to the complexity and burden and costs on a system which already is not functioning very well?

But what governments can do is set the tone.  If the United States really is interested in competition, it can use its basic strengths: the free-market approach to life, which applies to individual opportunities.  It could have an immigration policy which opens the doors to the best and brightest around the world, to come here and innovate.  It can focus on its education system and focus on funding basic research in universities, which leads to the creation of smart people and ideas.  It could minimize the bureacratic burden on startup companies, and adopt tax policies which promote investment and research in innovation and (technology) infrastructure.

The government can set the environment which allows smart people to do smart things.

Don't Flush on Earth Day, Dudes: "If It's Yellow, Let it Mellow . . . . "

BEST ADVICE FOR toilet people who want climate change:  Don't flush after you pee.  If you're a clean freak, close the toilet lid and open the window.  If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down, as they said back in the day.  Don't know who said it or what day exactly, but that's what I heard.  My household doesn't flush after weeing, and we save thousands of gallons a year.  Imagine how much water would be saved in countries that use flush toilets.  If the next great global wars will be over water resources, not oil, then it's worth a shot.  Just aim those peckers straight and don't splash, dammit.  Happy Earth Day.

"Toilet Humour" by G3Cube, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

Part 1: Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett on Global Innovation, the "Fun Space" and Bone-fishing

 

FORMER INTEL CEO and chairman Craig Barrett is a cowboy at heart.  An avid outdoorsman with a ranch and resort in Montana, U.S.A., Barrett says he yearned to be a forest ranger when he was young.  But somehow he got sidetracked into teaching engineering at Stanford University, then running a U.S. $38 billion company called Intel, the world’s No. 1 technology chipmaker.  Barrett retired last year, although he's almost as busy now jetting around the globe, engaged in non-profit work in education, technology for the poor, and other world-changing issues.  In a recent telephone interview, I spoke with Barrett from his office in Phoenix, Arizona, where he lives part-time with his attorney wife, Barbara Barrett, the former U.S. Ambassador to Finland and a trained astronaut and jetfighter pilot.  Parts 2 and 3 of these posts will look at Barrett's thoughts on innovation policy, plus his keynote talk at the Global Technology Symposium at Stanford on how fortune cookies foster innovation.

(Above) "Visiting Intel's Second Life Island" by iconolith, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

 

CoolGlobalBiz: Are you enjoying your role as a global technology ambassador and business diplomat?  What’s your typical schedule like now?

 

Barrett: I’m certainly out of the day-to-day management business, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do.  I’m focusing on education and healthcare -- two minor topics.  I’m still travelling a bit internationally and in the United States . . . . I’m mostly doing things related to my interests and not in the commercial space, but what I consider to be in the fun space.  You’re really doing something that matters and impacts people.

 

 

From Sulu to Sikh Power: MasterCard's Ajay Banga and Star Trek's George Takei

 

INDIA'S MULTINATIONALS, from Tata to Infosys, have been gaining global strength in recent years, and Indian entrepreneurs have been spreading their talents overseas for decades . . . (USA Today, "Immigrants from India spread business success to homeland" and "Skilled Immigration and Economic Growth" by Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing and Gary Gereffi) . . . Now there's another reason for the Indian business diaspora to celebrate, with Mastercard recently naming its president, Ajay Banga, as new CEO starting July 1 . . . Banga joins other high-profile Indian CEOs, including PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, at global companies.

New MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga and current CEO Robert Selander. Photo above courtesy of MasterCard.

Global Auto Industry and New Cross-border Alliance: Renault-Nissan and Daimler AG

 

TheAutoChannel -- April 7, 2010 -- Opening remarks of the LIVE Renault-Nissan Daimler Alliance Press Conference.

 

CARLOS GHOSN, CEO of Renault-Nissan and master of the corporate alliance, has just raised the stakes even more in the global auto industry.  Ghosn, who saved nearly bankrupt Japanese auto giant Nissan 11 years ago by forming the Renault-Nissan Alliance, will be joining forces now with German automaker Daimler AG to share technology, manufacturing, purchasing and other joint business practices.  (Nissan company website, "Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler AG announce wide-ranging strategic cooperation" )

Apple's iPad: The Greatest Thing Since Electricity, or Sugar Water for the World?

 

"A Computer That Lived Up To Its Hype" by myoldpostcards, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.

 

YES, THE iPAD, released today, may be the coolest consumer tech product in decades.  Yes, Steve Jobs may be the most brilliant technologist of his generation.  And yes, Apple is one of the hottest companies in the world, valued at $214 billion on Nasdaq.  But is the iPad truly transformative and revolutionary in the larger global sense?  It will send Apple's stock and earnings sky-high.  It will make millions of techies, investors and consumers happy.  It will land Jobs on yet another round of magazine covers.  Good for Apple and its co-founder.  A game-changer?  Yes.  But change the world?  No.