(Image: iStock)
By Bolaji Ojo
Three years ago, Patrick Gelsinger rode in on a charger to save Intel Corp. He should have been on a fighter jet.
The battlefield and combatants had changed since Gelsinger left Intel 10 years earlier in 2009. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) were on his radar, but the main threat was coming from a different source. While Gelsinger was focusing on process technology leadership, Nvidia Corp. with its GPU-CPU combo had invaded and taken over Intel’s lucrative server business.
Gelsinger meant well, but in aiming to restore Intel’s old “glory” with new fabs and billions of dollars in fresh capital expenditure spending, he made a classic mistake that turnaround specialists know well to avoid: attempting the restoration of a storied enterprise is a recipe for further disaster.