"Starting with Jerry and continuing through Hector, in hindsight, there has been a virtually unbroken stream or very prescient decisions made."
Whatever else you may say about the Colonel, he knows the industry and he never was afraid to put his, and often many other peoples, money where his mouth is. Hector is not so bold. But AMD doesn't need that degree of boldness any more. What they need now is solid execution, something that was uneven under Sanders. Still, I do miss Jerry down on his knees in some back alley, the bones rattling in his fist as he tries to make his point...
Under Noyce, Intel was a nimble and innovative company. By the time of Grove, it had grown to more of a relentless force of nature. If something didn't measure up, it was cast aside. DRAM, the literal foundation of the company is one example. iAPX432 is another. It was under Grove that Intel started to play for all of the marbles though. Barrett bought into the death of the microprocessor. He tried to enter into other areas, with a notable lack of success, as the final drops were squeezed out of the microprocessor market. It is probably harder to get the last 5% of a market than the first 80, if for no other reason there are customers who won't buy from you unless you are the only supplier in existence. The reasons are many, most of which have some degree of religion attached to it. So the only way to have 100% of the market is to kill off all of the competition. And the only way to do that is to use means that bend or break laws and what is seen as fair business tactics. Which makes that last 5% grow to more like last 10%.
And when you focus so much of the company resources on the task, you generally wind up taking your eye off the ball. When you are up to your, umm, waist, in alligators, it is easy to forget your goal was to drain the swamp...
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