David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…They’ve acquired IP. They’ve created a company. There’s a paved path. He gets to work at ITRI. He is working on all this. He’s transforming the organization into a high-performing organization. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, KT Li comes back to him and he’s like, hey, great, you’re running our Bell Labs, you’re running ITRI. Now I want you to start a company. Morris is like, uhh. KT’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t want you to have somebody else in ITRI do it. I want you, Morris Chang, to start a new semiconductor company here in Taiwan and I want you to make it into a global leader. Morris is like, uhm, okay. I think he doesn’t say this directly, but he’s got a great quote I’m going to say in a minute. Remember this is not a democracy in Taiwan at this time. Morris is also on his third job in three years. Yeah, he doesn’t need a salary to survive, but this is kind of the end of the road for him. If he gets fired, here at ITRI, he’s legit done. He kind of doesn’t have a choice here. The quote, this is so Morris, it’s so great. He says, “It was like in the movie The Godfather. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.” I do think the implication was go start an Intel, or go start an IDM. It wasn’t, go start the very first pure-play foundry.…

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