SAN FRANCISCO - SEPTEMBER 18: Intel co-founder Gordon Moore during a conversation with National ... [+]
A Gordon Moore sighting at the Intel campus in Santa Clara, California, was always treated like the appearance of a rock star. I was there for a few such events over ten years of visiting Intel’s headquarters to work on communication skills with its senior leaders.
Moore, who died Friday at the age of 94, deserved his legendary status because of his role in building Silicon Valley. Moore wrote a paper in 1965, three years before co-founding Intel, where he first articulated ‘Moore’s Law,’ a prediction that the number of transistors on a single chip would double every year.
“All I was trying to do was get that message across, that by putting more and more stuff on a chip, we were going to make all electronics cheaper,” Moore recalled.
Moore was the last surviving member of the Intel Trinity, the three leaders who are credited for putting the ‘silicon’ in Silicon Valley. Although Intel co-founders Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Gordon Moore had different personalities and skills, all three shared a similar mindset that would prove to be the foundation of their success: optimism.
“Moore’s life and career are a reminder of a golden age in U.S. entrepreneurship,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Every time I walked onto the Intel campus, I was greeted with a quote above the doors that welcomed employees and visitors. Written by Robert Noyce, the statement read:
“Optimism is an essential ingredient of innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security, adventure over staying in safe places?”
That quote became my mantra and one that I often repeated as I built my own business.
I learned that founders really are different than the rest of us. They often have an unrelenting optimism in the future because starting anything is hard—and usually meets with critics and skeptics. If an entrepreneur isn’t optimistic, it’s difficult for that person to survive and thrive through recessions, setbacks, and other inevitable challenges in their path.
Moore, Noyce, and Grove started Intel during an economic recession in 1968, which led Grove to say, “Economic downturns always end…the future favors the optimist.”
The 1968 recession was followed by even more severe recessions and financial catastrophes that the Intel trinity had to navigate in 1973, 1980, 1990, and 2001. But with each setback or technological transition, Moore, Noyce, and Grove accepted the challenge as an opportunity to re-evaluate their position and pivot (Grove famously spearheaded Intel’s transition from memory chips to microprocessors, a move that paved the way for the personal computing era).
Under Moore’s watch, Intel made mistakes. But Moore reminded his team that “one thing a leader does is remove the stigma of mistakes…I view this year’s failure as next year’s opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided.”
As a topic, ‘optimism’ has a bad reputation and elicits eye rolls, especially in times of financial distress or uncertainty. But that’s exactly when optimism is needed the most.
Humans have a bias toward negativity. In fact, neuroscientists have found that we tend to pay more attention to negative information, which bombards us at every turn, than we do to positive news. But while focusing on threats served a valuable evolutionary role, innovation favors those leaders who are inspired to create products and services that will make the future a better place.
There’s a good reason why the Forbes list of billionaires is dominated by optimists, including Gordon Moore, who Forbes estimated to be worth more than $7 billion.
Warren Buffett Buffett, at the age of 92, recently wrote a letter at a time of serious political division, economic uncertainties, stubborn inflation, and regional conflicts that threaten to spread worldwide.
One telling paragraph in the letter received scant media attention, yet it tells you everything about an optimist. “I have been investing for 80 years,” Buffett wrote. “Despite our citizens’ penchant – almost enthusiasm – for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.”
Leaders choose their mindset. Optimism and pessimism are choices. Optimism is the tendency to expect good outcomes, even in uncertain situations. Optimists focus on opportunities and look for solutions. On the other hand, pessimism is the tendency to expect bad outcomes and to believe the world is a dangerous place—and will only worsen. Therefore, pessimists focus on problems and obstacles. Overall, the main difference between optimists and pessimists is their perspective on expectations for the future.
Who would you rather follow, the optimistic or the pessimist? Give me the wild-eyed enthusiasm of the optimist any day. Gordon Moore was one of them, as were his Intel co-founders.
Optimists built Silicon Valley and will lead the innovations of the future.
