Where will this CFO-born CEO lead Intel, a technology giant with a history of 5 1 year?
Recently, Sribo, dressed in a blue suit, came to Intel's Beijing office and accepted an exclusive interview with CBN, which was his first interview with China media since he became CEO of Intel.
The biggest challenge: fully stimulate the potential within Intel.
CBN: What was the first thing you did when you learned that you were CEO?
Bob Swan: I felt very deeply at that time. I am very excited, honored, excited and flattered. I wrote an email to Intel's107,000 employees, telling them that I am honored to be the head of one of the best companies in the world, and I also need their help and support to achieve the lofty goals we set for Intel.
CBN: Before you became the CEO of Intel, the main work experience in your career was related to financial management, which actually broke the tradition of Intel. What changes will your management style bring to Intel?
Bob Swan: I have a rich professional background. Joining Intel is undoubtedly an opportunity that I am very excited and cherish. The challenge and opportunity I face are essentially how to redefine and shape Intel's role in Intel's future development. In the past, Intel occupied a very large market share in a relatively narrow market, because we had the best engineer resources in the world. My challenge now is to enable these excellent engineers to focus on a broader market and opportunities.
We need to continue our efforts in four core areas. First, all our work must adhere to the concept of "integration with customers". Second, we should always implement the "One Intel" strategy. Intel has hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. If hundreds of thousands of employees can form a collective, we can achieve some incredible goals. Third, we should ensure that companies can communicate openly and transparently and information can flow freely. In this way, large companies can work like small companies, whether it is innovation or technological iteration. Fourth, we have excellent corporate culture. While continuing to adhere to the corporate culture, we should also be brave enough to take risks. Intel is ambitious, and to realize these dreams, we need to try some risks and quickly learn from those unfulfilled dreams, so that we can do better when facing the next risk. Therefore, as the CEO of such an excellent enterprise, my duty is to fully stimulate everyone's ambitions and help them achieve their goals.
CBN: You want Intel to work as flexibly as a small business. How do you reshape Intel?
Bob Swan: Intel is a $70 billion company. We are experiencing an unprecedented era of great changes in the industry. There are more and more innovations, and the speed of innovation is getting faster and faster. Therefore, our challenge is to make full use of our scale to gain unique advantages, and at the same time, we must keenly seize and make use of market opportunities.
CBN: What do you think is the biggest challenge in running Intel?
Bob Swan: Personally, the biggest challenge is how to fully stimulate the potential within Intel. Our company has gathered the smartest107,000 employees on the planet. When they have achieved great success in the past 50 years, how to further stimulate their potential and make them play a greater role in the future? So I think the biggest challenge is to fully inspire the wisdom and morale of Intel employees and engineers, so that they can have a greater impact on the world even though they have already had a great impact on the world.
CBN: You mentioned execution several times. Why is execution so important now?
Bob Swan: For us, execution is more important than ever. We hope to play a greater role in the success of our customers than ever before. We need to redefine the market. Besides the CPU used in PC and data center, we need to develop a wider range of technologies.
Playing a greater role in the success of customers means that customers should rely on our ability and our ability to execute perfectly. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of playing a greater role in the success of customers, we want to ensure that we can implement and honor our commitments to customers.
The world is data-centric.
CBN: In your open letter as CEO, you mentioned that "Intel is in the most successful transition stage in history". How to define "success"? What are your plans to continue to push Intel to new heights?
Bob Swan: Indeed, I mentioned that Intel is in the most successful transition stage in the company's history. We say this because we think that Intel is mainly a company that provides technology for PC in history. Looking forward to the future transformation, I hope to further promote the development of Intel technology and support everything. Because in today's world, almost all devices are computers to some extent, not just PCs, data centers, cars, factories or retail stores, but all the increasing devices are computers in a sense. In an increasingly "data-centric" world, we hope to realize our ambition through transformation, that is, to provide strong support for all walks of life around the world through the continuous development of technology.
CBN: As a CEO, what is your primary task or goal at present?
Bob Swan: Make it all come true. We will continue to accelerate the deployment of innovative technologies, so that these technologies can be popularized on more and more abundant devices, and now there are billions of interconnected devices around the world. Our goal is to provide stronger support for these devices through Intel technology in an increasingly "data-centric" world.
CBN: In the past three years, Intel has achieved good financial performance. In these three years, you happened to be the CFO of the company. However, the figures of the first quarter of 20 19 were slightly disappointing, especially the financial data related to the data center business were not satisfactory. What happened in here? Does this mean that the growth rate of Intel will slow down in the future?
Bob Swan: Last year was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Intel Corporation. In the past three years, that is, the 48th, 49th and 50th years of the company's establishment, Intel has made record achievements. This makes us very excited about Intel's future development prospects. Regarding 20 19, we just disclosed the latest information to investors last week, introducing the expected goal of Intel 20 19. According to our data, 20 19 will be the second year in the history of Intel 5 1. Therefore, the focus and goal of our 20 19 is to fulfill the commitment to customers.
CBN: So you don't think the performance in the first quarter will last?
Bob Swan: In the end-user market, we see an increasing demand for powerful computing power, which is extremely strong all over the world. Think about your daily activities, and there is a demand for data behind them. Whether it's the equipment in your hand, the computer you use or the car you drive, the demand for data is very high, far exceeding before. Intel technology has realized more powerful data storage, processing and analysis capabilities, which is more and more related to the needs of the whole market. Therefore, in the end-user market, we have seen unprecedented strong demand, and we have very extensive technical coverage and strong technical strength, which makes us full of expectations and excitement about Intel's performance in the end-user market.
How to ensure the success of the transformation?
CBN: 20 19 is a challenging year. What measures do you plan to take to ensure the successful transformation of Intel and achieve its development goals?
CBN: Wintel Alliance defined the PC era, and both companies fell behind in the mobile era. Since satyanarayana nadella became the CEO of Microsoft, Microsoft has performed quite well. what do you think? Does the board have similar expectations for you?
Bob Swan: Indeed, Microsoft and Nadella have achieved great transformation of the company. This is a good learning opportunity, let us know how Microsoft has continuously realized its own development from the alliance relationship centered on PC or Wintel, and what kind of reference Microsoft's experience can provide us. We will also learn from other partners how to expand the company's vision. I believe that Intel's board of directors also has high expectations for me.
CBN: What exactly have you learned?
Bob Swan: I learned how big companies should keep moving forward. When the PC market can provide huge opportunities for enterprises and make the development of enterprises very successful, how to realize the successful transformation and how to continuously promote the evolution of corporate culture in order to seize more and more extensive opportunities.
CBN: How will you deal with the failures and risks in the process of transformation?
Bob Swan: When it comes to failure and risk, we need to be able to learn quickly from failure. We should dare to embrace failure and understand the reasons for our failure. Then, we should try more risks. We are a large company, which is unique in itself. At the same time, it also needs to be an enterprise with quick response, strong innovation ability and entrepreneurial spirit.
Three major steering technologies: artificial intelligence, 5G and autonomous driving.
CBN: Intel expects that the new market opportunities will reach 300 billion US dollars. How much share will Intel occupy?
Bob Swan: More than before. In the past, Intel's role in science and technology was to occupy about 90% market share in PC and data center CPU market. But things are different now. What we see is the greater demand for computing power in the terminal market, and people need to be able to obtain more relevant information in time. Therefore, we believe that the market opportunities that Intel can serve or satisfy have reached $300 billion. This market includes not only CPU, but also a broad technology market, covering CPU, GPU, FPGA, artificial intelligence, 5G, autonomous driving and other deployable technologies. In such a broader market, Intel currently only has a share of 20%-25%. In the long run, we have the ambition to further develop the value of Intel, so that Intel technology will continue to bring more powerful forces to the whole world.
CBN: Is there a specific goal?
CBN: Artificial intelligence and 5G are creating huge opportunities and a highly competitive market. What are the advantages of Intel?
Bob Swan: Today, the whole semiconductor industry is at an exciting time node. We see that some very critical technical turning points are constantly emerging, creating a lot of new opportunities. Among them, 5G, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving are the turning points of the three core technologies, which will bring us great opportunities and promote the needs of computing, analysis, storage and retrieval. Therefore, Intel should continue to play a leading role through these turning technologies in cooperation with our partners. In the field of 5G, we must work with our partners to promote the deployment of 5G on a global scale; In the field of artificial intelligence, our goal is to deploy AI capabilities in every chip produced by Intel; In the field of autonomous driving, we acquired Mobileye Company, playing a more important role in the industry, and achieving the goal of making global urban traffic safer through Mobileye technology.
CBN: When it comes to 5G, we should talk about the modem service of smart phones. Since you became CEO, Intel decided to quit the modem business of smart phones. There are many rumors in the industry about how Intel will handle these businesses, including selling them to Apple and even to Ziguang Zhanrui in China. Is it true?/You don't say.
Bob Swan: When Intel talks about further expanding potential market opportunities and considering the importance of a market, we have three key criteria: first, whether this is a differentiated technology to ensure that we have a unique competitive advantage; Second, can Intel play a bigger and more critical role in helping customers succeed? Third, can Intel make a profit?
In the big market of 5G, if we ask ourselves these three questions, the answer is "Yes", especially in network infrastructure and edge computing. Faced with the specific field of smart phones, we have announced our withdrawal from the 5G mobile phone modem business, because we don't see any profit opportunities for Intel in this market.
Therefore, we decided to increase efforts in technical fields such as network infrastructure and autonomous driving.
CBN: Are there potential buyers?
Bob Swan: Intel has invested several years to develop a strong intellectual property and patent portfolio related to 5G. We are also evaluating the choices and opportunities that these technologies can bring us, including how to apply 5G modems in non-smart phone applications and edge Internet of Things devices. We are evaluating various possibilities and looking for the most effective way to use the intellectual property rights and patents developed by our engineering team.
CBN: In recent years, Intel has acquired many enterprises to expand its capabilities and make the coverage of products and technologies more extensive. Are you satisfied with the results of these acquisitions?
CBN: Do you have any plans to adjust Intel's investment strategy?
Bob Swan: I shouldn't make too many adjustments. Intel has been spending a lot of money on R&D, with an investment of $654.38+03.5 billion. At the same time, it invested 654.38+0.5 billion dollars to build factories and produce high-performance products. We invest money to quickly fill the gaps or gaps in our capabilities, or to further expand our role in the existing market. At the same time, it will bring better returns to our shareholders. This is what we have done in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Cooperate with China market.
CBN: How do you evaluate the industrial ecology of China and China?
Bob Swan: Last year was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Intel Corporation. We have been rooted in China for nearly 35 years. Therefore, as a company, many of Intel's successes are closely related to our success in China. For Intel, China is a huge market, which is growing and its significance is increasing. We have many customers in China, and we have established and maintained long-term good relations with them. We have wafer factories, packaging and testing plants, engineers and technicians in China, and intel capital. We have been investing in technological innovation in China, so the relationship between Intel and China is cooperative. In the past 35 years, China has played a very important role in the successful development of Intel. We also expect China to play a greater role in the future.
CBN: Will you consider making a big strategic adjustment in China after you become CEO?
Bob Swan: I don't think there will be any strategic adjustment. As I said before, China has played a very important role in Intel and its great success in the past. So we will let China continue to play a very important role.
CBN: How to further cooperate with partners in China?
Bob Swan: Our cooperation with our partners in China has been going on for a long time. In China, we have established very important relationships with original equipment manufacturers and customers, including Alibaba, Tencent, JD.COM, Baidu, Huawei and ZTE. Many customers cooperate with Intel to promote the continuous development of technology deployment. Therefore, we should continue to strengthen and expand the relationship with our partners in China, so that Intel can play a more important role in supporting industries in China in the future.