Conversation from Intel's Corner Office

posted by Ken Kaplan on April 13, 2009

I’m a big fan of American Public Media’s daily radio show MarketPlace. I love the turn-of-phrase masters behind the mic — from the David Brancaccio before 2005 to the show’s current host, Kai Ryssdal. The show delivers some of public radio’s edgiest, anecdotal descriptions of the day’s business news.

That’s why I was fired up to learn that Ryssdal was visiting Intel headquarters to interview Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.

I listen to the show driving up and down the main artery of Silicon Valley, HWY 101. After hearing the Intel segment, I got home and checked out the MarketPlace Website Website, which served up the audio file, transcript of the full interview and other background related to Otellini and Intel. The site even as social networking share features and lets you embed your favorite segments:

Listening then reading the segment, I captured some great insights into Intel’s culture, drive for investing in innovation and the passion that pumps through the place. Here are some of my favorite lines Otellini shared during the interview:

…as a company our job is to expand the possibilities for our product, to put computing into more and more devices, to lower the cost of it, to make it easier to use, to make it more accessible for people around the world independent of income levels, and to make it more fun.

…If your computer broke tonight, would you wait for the recession to end to buy another one?

…This is a different kind of cycle, this is a global economic driven cycle, but one of the things that I spend a lot of time as CEO doing is telling my employees, many of whom are in their twenties that have never seen a cycle, the nature of a cycle: that things end, that things get better, that you go through things. And for a technology company, I believe it’s essential that you continue to invest in these cycles because as cycles end, no one wants your old product, they want what’s new and what’s next.

…for us to make the 32 nanometers, and deploy that over the next 18 months, and run product on it that we have been designing over a number of years sends a very clear signal to our customers and to their customers that they can count on us to deliver new product next year. So if you are a Hewlett Packard or a Dell and you want to build the next generation of notebooks perhaps for 2009 and late ‘09, and 2010 and 2011, you’ll put designers onto that this year for next years’ product.

…We are the best in the world at building highly complex silicon and we can do it in a cost effective manner and in a manner of which is high quality and delivers hundreds of millions of units a year, reliably.

I even checked out the comments section below the Otellini interview segment. There was a wonderful comment from “A Thankful Grandmother” who shared her appreciation for Intel’s investment in education. Her grandson was a recent winner of Intel’s Science Talent Search.

*As a grandmother of Philip Streich,a recent winner in the Intel Science Talent Search I was so interested in reading about Mr Otellini. What a company he has helped build through the years.What a wonderful gift Intel is giving to our youth and to our future by giving them recognition and the means to help them pursue their dreams…. *

Sure I’m a sucker for a good story about the place where I work, but what hit the sweet spot for me was how rich of an experience I got from listening to MarketPlace on the radio then spending more time on their Website. Curiosity sparked by the story I heard from the terrestrial radio airwaves was truly rewarded by the Internet experience…and it was insight I could easily share online with my family and friends.

The Internet really has grown more essential and enriching thanks to many of the features Marketplace is using: embed codes, share buttons and commenting. It sure is a far cry from the days when I used to work at a local TV station.

 

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tagged: americanpublicmedia, innovation, intel, internet, marketplace, npr, paulotellini, radio, socialmedia