John Hennessy Interview (page: 2 / 8) President of Stanford University	Print Interview

Along the way, did you have any doubts or a fear of failure? Were these things you had to deal with?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. John Hennessy: Certainly fear of failure at some points, which is why I would try and do this while you're young. When failures aren't -- when you know that it's a time you can afford to take risks in your career. Much harder to do it when you're older. Much harder to do it when you're older. You're already established in a field. You're well thought of. Branching out to a new field and doing something that's highly risky is harder when you reach a certain point in your career. Certainly some self-doubts. A few times my wife probably thought I was crazy. And lots of hard work, and you're wondering, "Are we going to be able to carry this through?" And of course, when you decide to commercialize it, lots of other issues besides the importance of the technology come into the picture. Can you build the team? Can you manage it? Can you finance it? Can you sell the technology to people? And those turned out to be some of the major challenges. In fact, the technology challenges were probably the easy ones in that part of the process.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Did you ever imagine that you would become an entrepreneur?

John Hennessy: I didn't. And here is where the role of mentors comes in. After we had more or less completed the project and we were not getting a lot of interest from the commercial computer companies, one of the founders of Digital Equipment Corporation, Gordon Bell, came along and prodded us and said, "You need to get this technology out of here. Maybe I'd be willing to help you finance it, or help you find financing for it." He convinced us that was the only way it was really going to get out and impact the world the way it should.

So you founded the company MIPS to market that technology, and it's become a very successful business. As an academic, what did you learn from that experience in the business world?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. John Hennessy: Oh, I think it taught me a tremendous amount. Particularly, it has made me a much better classroom teacher. It taught me a lot of people skills. It taught me to be decisive. In academia, we sometimes like to delay decisions until we know all the facts and the decision is clear, black or white. Well in industry you simply cannot afford to do that, because you never get to that point, and the pace of business moves much quicker. So it has enabled me to deal with -- particularly -- more complex organizations, where you have to make decisions, where you don't have all the data, and where there's a trade-off to be made. But it also made me a much better classroom teacher. Sometimes in academia it's easy to become isolated from the real world, and it gave me a great appreciation for how much effort and energy it took to take a research concept and turn it into a product, which was just phenomenal. We spent lots more money in that part of the process than we had to spend in doing the basic research. Lots more manpower went into the latter half, and that gave me a tremendous appreciation for what industrial colleagues have to go through. I think that has helped us build a stronger relationship between academia and industry going forward.

Did it teach you something about leadership?

John Hennessy: Surely.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Leadership is really about convincing people to move in a direction that they really want to move, but they sometimes can't see quite how to get there. And I think you certainly see that in a company, especially a small young company, where you need every single person's help -- focus -- to really get over the problem. You need people. In a small company you don't have enough employees to put one employee on each problem. You need people who will be willing to move around and challenge themselves. In the very end, when we were getting ready to ship our very first product, I realized that we didn't have enough people working on the software to generate testing for the microprocessor, to ensure it would work. So I jumped in and wrote a key piece of software, and I think that really helped not only teach me some things about testing software but really inspire the rest of the people.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think good leaders lead by doing. They lead by being committed to the project, and by getting involved in it, and really be willing to do it. I tried to take that into my leadership roles in the university. For example, despite the fact that I'm the university president, I advise five freshmen in the university, and I'm teaching this summer in sophomore college, which is our introductory experience for sophomores returning early in September for a two-week intensive course. I think that really reminds you that you lead by doing. People skills are obviously the critical thing in leadership, and being able to deal with people in a way that respects the contribution that every single member of the team makes. A company does not work, a university doesn't work, unless everybody contributes their piece -- the students, the faculty, the staff -- and the same thing in a company. Everybody from the person manning the receptionist desk, to the person cleaning the floors, to the person doing the design, to the CEO, each person has a role. That role -- each one of those roles -- is critical to making that company successful. When we started MIPS, every single employee had stock options in the company, because we believed that every single person should be motivated to see the company be successful.

And look what you wrought!

John Hennessy: It was fun, too.

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