Moore's law is the driving force of the IT industry for the last 40 years, roughly stating that computing power doubles almost every 2 years. That exponential rate of change in processing power diffuses eventually into communications, storage, software applications, business processes, business models, and wider transformation of industry and society. In other words, Moore's law, an observation made in the 60's by Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel corporation, summarizes the essence of our Internet and information-driven age.
I call Barrett's meta-law an observation made by Craig Barrett, Intel's soon-to-retire chairman, in a recent WSJ article[1]. Barrett's meta-law is a clear and compeling statement: "Don't mess with Moore's law". It is a meta-law, because it is a law about a law.
According to Barret, companies that disregard the meta-law face destructive consesquences. Evidently breaking the meta-law would also have a disruptive effect on the IT industry and all the adjacent tech-enabled industries.
On the other hand society as a whole, might be better off slowing down a bit its breath-taking pace of socio-technical change.
Other lessons from Intel's chairman on tech leadership:
- Invest during hard times: important but easy to forget in the current economic environment
- Follow the business, not wall-street: manage with a long-term horizon not myopically
- It pays to have good competitors
- Be a proponent of larger-than-business causes, e.g. support education, and basic research
References
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