By Lola Obembe
On Monday, the world lost a giant of innovation, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, Andy Grove.
Andy fled the holocaust and Soviet oppression to become one of the most powerful CEOs in the history of tech and the Silicon Valley. He is credited with completely changing the dynamics of the tech industry by shifting Intel’s core business away from producing memory chips to making microprocessors. This became necessary in order for the company to survive waning demand of their product and a market flooded with cheaper and substandard imitations. This was a major inflection point in Andy’s career which led him to live by the mantra “Only the Paranoid Survive”
1985 seems like a very long time ago today, but there are many similarities and lessons that we can continue to learn from Andy Grove and Intel.
Andy believed that a corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin…methods have to change, focus has to change, values have to change and the sum total of these changes is transformation. He refused to ever let his guard down.
Heirs Holdings is a dynamic group with some of our companies facing similar industry threats to what Intel faced in 1985, but we are at an advantage because we can tap into the resources, expertise, contacts, knowledge, experience and ingenuity that spans the breadth of the entire group.
We are emphasizing Innovation as a core competency, not because we don’t already have it, but because the changing trends in our business and socio-political environments demands that we do so at all levels.
From an idea that enables us to cut our costs on printing paper; something as simple as introducing coded printing; to an idea that could lead to a major inflection point like the kind experienced at Intel and all the other ideas in between.
Did you have an idea today? Did a thought cross your mind about doing something differently in your work process? The innovation portal is only a conduit of these ideas. It allows us to recognize the ingenuity that we already know is going on every day at HH.
So as the world says goodbye to Andy Grove, let us remember his mantra and act quickly.
– “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure”
Log on to the Talenthub portal today and tell us your idea.
