ADI co-founder Ray Stata talks about "Innovation and Entrepreneurship"

“Since then, I have visited China many times and have had the opportunity to witness China’s miraculous development, the rise of manufacturing, the expansion of transportation and communication infrastructure, and the creation of many world-class high-tech companies,” Ray said. “At China’s current stage of development, innovation and entrepreneurship are seen as the main drivers of further development.”

ADI co-founder and chairman of the board Ray Stata is giving a speech

"Why do you want to start a company? For me, I had already figured it out in high school that sooner or later I would start my own company and become my own boss. In fact, I didn't have a specific vision for how big the company should be at that time. I just wanted to have the opportunity to control my own destiny. Later I found that many innovators and entrepreneurs had the same idea." Ray said frankly.

Ray, who was born as an engineer, knows how to retain talents. He also strives to create enough space for these talents to develop their talents and potential in ADI, create a comfortable, open and cooperative working environment, and encourage them to be innovative and fearless of failure, help them to fully develop their potential, and make them relied on and respected in the team for achieving goals. At ADI, engineers have a say in influencing business strategies, investment decisions and organizational policies, and managers are encouraged to treat engineers exactly as business partners, creating a parallel ladder for the development of engineers and encouraging them to go further in technology.

“These are the conditions that foster innovation and achieve outstanding results, and ADI has had these prerequisites for success from the beginning,” Ray said. “The best way to satisfy customers and investors is to satisfy employees first. Creating a culture where employees are satisfied is very important.”

Through the study of companies with a history of more than 100 years, it is found that they all have a keen sense of perception. They are not only able to perceive changes in the environment, but also learn from them and quickly adapt to these changes. "This may not sound difficult, but the difficulty lies in changing your view of the key elements of success. The flexibility to adapt to changes is essential to long-term success." Ray emphasized.

In the early days of ADI, before the development of integrated circuits, ADI was already very successful, but Ray decided to learn how to design and manufacture integrated circuits, as he believed that the success at that time was only short-lived. "However, our engineers disagreed, and the board of directors completely rejected my proposal to transform into a semiconductor company." Ray continued to share, "But I was very sure to take action, so I made a suggestion that the board of directors could not refuse - I personally funded the establishment of a startup company to design and manufacture IC operational amplifiers and sell them through ADI. ADI can choose to acquire my company at the original price. If the company goes bankrupt, I will personally bear all losses."

Ray's behavior, which seemed silly to most people at the time, was recognized by the market just a few years later - ADI acquired the startup company and began to take semiconductor technology seriously.

Not long ago, ADI was successfully selected into the first Forbes list of the world's top 100 digital economy companies, and was one of the two semiconductor companies (the other is NVIDIA) to be in the top ten, ranking 7th. In fact, ADI, which excels in high-performance analog technology, has been actively active in the fields of IoT, 5G, automotive electronics, new energy and other systems in recent years, striving to provide customers with systematic solutions.

Brian Author, author of "The Nature of Technology", has a similar view. He believes that the nature of innovation changes as the technology wave matures. When the performance and cost of technology are perfect enough to support a variety of products that can change society, innovation turns to "combinatorial innovation."

In fact, platform companies such as Uber and Amazon rely more on combining existing innovative technologies than on breakthrough innovations. Uber's success comes from combining technologies such as GPS, wireless Internet connectivity and microprocessor programmability in innovative ways, which are already used in smartphones and servers. "There are still opportunities to improve the technology at the component level, such as computing power for artificial intelligence, bandwidth for 5G and low power consumption in wireless applications. But the biggest impact on society will come from combining technologies to reduce the cost of increasingly complex and powerful products," said Ray.

In a two-and-a-half-hour speech and roundtable discussion, Ray shared his wisdom and insights on innovation and management from his decades of successful leadership of ADI, the world's most innovative company. It is too difficult to fully summarize ADI's more than half a century of successful innovation experience and Ray's entrepreneurial spirit. Let us see how ADI "goes beyond all possibilities" in future global technological innovation!