Tough Things First: Leadership Lessons from Silicon Valley's Longest Serving CEO

CHAPTER 7

Processes, Policies, and Procedures

Xerox is responsible for a Micrel policy because it shook our business pretty badly.

Xerox was in its heyday. It was the master of many imaging industries and at that moment in time was a significant player in printers. It did very well and was leading the market with its innovations. Xerox was coming out with a color printer, which in that era was a market innovation.

Micrel wanted a piece of that business. Because we believed Xerox and its position were rock-solid, Micrel developed the power management parts for that printer. Our engineers put a lot of time and effort into inventing the products we sold to Xerox and, as a much smaller company back in the early 1990s, banked big on Xerox as its printer ...