Executive Chairman, Texas Instruments
Interview with Rich Templeton at ESC SV 2010
Rich Templeton has some inspiring words for engineers. Patrick Mannion of EE Times interviewed him directly after his keynote at ESC Silicon Valley on April 28, 2010.
About Richard Templeton
Richard Templeton, executive chairman of Texas Instruments, has emphasized the company’s strategy of maintaining internal manufacturing as a competitive advantage, stating that during the COVID-19 pandemic, TI performed better than competitors that were highly outsourced. He noted that in the second quarter of 2020, TI planned to run its factories at levels similar to the first quarter, leading to an inventory increase to support customers with limited forecasting ability. Templeton also discussed capital allocation, advocating for disciplined stock buybacks and dividends, and said that research and development spending would remain unchanged due to its long-term, five-to-ten-year horizon. Templeton has spoken about the importance of U.S. semiconductor industry competitiveness, calling for long-term investment in research, access to skilled talent, and a competitive tax structure. He described the U.S. as needing to be an attractive destination for the world’s best minds and supported policies that encourage R&D and domestic manufacturing investment. On geopolitical tensions, he stated that TI would comply with all laws and rulings, and that companies that adapt best will cope with challenges accordingly. Templeton also reiterated his view that recessions present opportunities to extend competitive advantage through continued investment.
Transcript (20 segments)
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Patrick Mannion0:00
Patrick Mannion with The Times and I'm here at the Embedded Systems Conference and I'm joined by Rich Templeton, CEO of Texas Instruments. Rich just finished a fantastic keynote session and I want to address some questions with him concerning some of the points that he raised during the keynote.
Rich, you talked a lot about some changes that engineers are facing. Can you talk a little bit about how mentally engineers need to change, how they think, to address some of those changes?
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Richard Templeton0:19
Yeah, you know, I really do think I'm optimistic. I think engineers are raised, they get into the field because they're curious, and I think they just got to stay with that passion. Don't lose it when they get into work. Believe you can change the world and that you've got the control of that. I think folks who do that, they do it really well.
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Patrick Mannion0:34
You talked a lot about how the performance is changing and software has been enhanced and silicon is improving following Moore's law, etc. But all of those are linear changes. Are there any step function changes that you see happening in terms of the convergence of physics, chemistry, and biology that engineers really have to factor into their thinking when you help them do the job?
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Richard Templeton0:53
Well, yeah, well, as you know better, if you listen to some of the applications we talked about, be it healthcare, be it even in the energy side, this is where it is. I think more than linear thinking, right? You have to start understanding the electrical circuit of the body. You have to start understanding the chemistry of batteries or the applications of power systems. So I think the combination of the skills of understanding these different systems plus the increasing capability of the semiconductors, that's really the point I want to get across. And I think we could really do some great things together.
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Patrick Mannion1:25
It could be said that everything is a nail because you have a hammer, your hammer is silicon. Do you plan to change how you do your own job in that sense when you migrate into chemistry and biology as well? Do DNA circuits, think that nature?
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Richard Templeton1:37
Yeah, I think if there's, if we ever see opportunities to be able to blend things differently, we will. And I'll give you a great example of our DLP technology, or Digital Light Projection, which today is now being considered as a pico projector that could be embedded in cell phones or cameras or tiny computer systems. And that's a MEMS-based technology making mirrors move, right? And that's, you know, a little bit adjacent to what we've historically done. So the thing that we encourage people internally is don't focus on the process technology or the device, think about the application, think about the problem you're solving, and that will take you to what type of technologies you need to have to support it.
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Patrick Mannion2:20
Right. I asked, closed it to me, what are you telling me? You can hear, you can over video to exist? You want to hear me lip-sync subtitles? And I sort of asked us inside, I kind of alluded to the fact that engineers are also wrestling with changes themselves personally for their careers, right? With the idea of outsourcing, that that's a critical issue that we're facing. Do you think there's anything that engineers need to factor in when it comes to evaluating their own job?
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Richard Templeton2:57
Yeah, you know, I go back to very close to the answer I talked inside, and that is people that take control, okay, and deliver different products that help companies compete, I think they find plenty of opportunity in front of them. And I'm not trying to be, you know, completely optimist on it, be real about it, but companies and engineers that believe they are in control of their destiny and deliver great products, they usually have very, very successful careers and outlooks on that front. So that's the encouragement I give to people, as opposed to is the system doing something to me? Don't be a victim, be somebody that's attacking and take advantage of it. A controller's one destiny more.
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Patrick Mannion3:34
And that's not everything. You're kind of the perfect person to say that because you're kind of the uber engineer in the sense that you've come through the engineering system, you went through sales, and you became the head of one of the most successful semiconductor companies in the world. But yet engineers are also, from the front bench level up, engineers are wrestling with the idea of do I Twitter, do I become a brand myself, how do I raise myself up beyond the bench level engineer to make a difference in the world?
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Richard Templeton3:57
Yeah, well, you know, I can talk about inside TI, and I think it's important, and we discovered this long ago, is give people alternatives. Because a lot of times you're five years into your career, you're not sure, do you want to go a management path, you want to go a technical ladder path? Well, don't make people decide as a company, make sure you have those alternatives. And that way, as people get to that fifth or sixth year, or third year, wherever it is, they can choose. And we've got some folks that, you know, one time thought they wanted to be a business leader, but you know what, they really enjoyed was just taking, you know, great leadership on the technology side, and they end up on a tech ladder and rising to very high levels. And you've got some that said I'm going to be an engineer forever, but about five years, forever was over, and they turned out to be great, great leaders. And so don't try to overthink that, just figure out how you add value, how you have fun, what you enjoy, and those answers will, you know, become apparent to you.
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Patrick Mannion4:54
How do you motivate your engineers internally?
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Richard Templeton4:57
You know, you turn them loose. Let the place be decentralized. Let them know that the customers are ultimately in charge. Because people that solve customers' problems end up being successful. And I don't care if that's a businessperson, a marketing person, a salesperson, a design engineer, let them go on that, and you'll find the folks that really want to compete.
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Patrick Mannion5:14
What is more important, silicon or software?
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Richard Templeton5:16
You can't separate them these days. Embedded systems are just that. Our customers don't care, is that a byte of code or a transistor, they're solving a problem. They care about the performance, the power, the cost of the ultimate system. You do have to have the skills to make sure that you can deliver on that, though.
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Patrick Mannion5:32
What excites you? Oh, you've heard the list today.
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Richard Templeton5:34
You know, look at the things that we can touch and impact. When's the last time we could sit here at a conference like this, talk about impacting the health and wellness of people around the globe, cutting and reducing energy, maybe the bigger problem the world faces. That's, you know, in some ways as much fun as you could have. Frustrating about bigger the company, the less you know everybody around you. I love knowing everybody that I deal with. The other part is I love getting around the world. I just wish jet lag didn't exist.
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Patrick Mannion6:03
Do you see anybody, any major changes for TI going forward? You've migrated from being a DSP company to being more of a signal processing company, integrating analog, and any further changes ahead?
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Richard Templeton6:10
I think in some ways, Patrick, the transition some people might assign to us as we've evolved from the baseband or the cellular world, or cell phones driving our growth, which was a DSP business. So now all of a sudden it's analog and embedded processing, very conscious choice because we looked at where the world was going and we said there's a better place to be. And as a result, we've got investment off of the baseband part, but you see what we're doing with MAP into smartphones, connectivity into phones. Analog today is the largest business inside of TI. Embedded processing is growing rapidly. We love what's happening with our expanding microcontroller positions in addition to everything we've always done on DSP. So we feel pretty good about where we're positioned. We've just got to stay focused and execute. Did a good job on that.
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Patrick Mannion6:59
Well done. Okay, thanks everybody for your time. And this is Patrick Mannion for EETimes signing off at Embedded Systems Conference here in San Jose. Thank you. I'm here with Rich Templeton, CEO of Texas Instruments. Now he is probably one of the high priests...