Cristiano Amon
President & CEO, Qualcomm
I think the ability to exercise leadership by influencing people, by being able to bring everybody on board and share your vision, has also been very important for me.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan is joined by the impressive leader of one of the world’s largest technology companies — Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm. After joining the company as an engineer in 1995, Cristiano ascended the conglomerate’s ranks and shaped its strategic direction along the way. Cristiano became CEO in 2021 and has continued to take Qualcomm to new heights.
In his conversation with Alan, Cristiano discusses his upbringing and education in Brazil and early stints at Qualcomm and Vesper, a wireless operator. Together, they dive into Cristiano’s journey from engineer to CEO and explore the lessons in leadership he’s learned over the years. Between the supply chain shortages of the pandemic and the recently passed CHIPS Act, Cristiano and Qualcomm’s work is more important than ever. Cristiano offers a thoughtful retrospective on his career while looking forward to the exciting work that lies ahead.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Cristiano Amon is President and Chief Executive Officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, and also serves on the Company’s board of directors. Amon assumed the role of CEO on June 30, 2021.
Amon began his Qualcomm career in 1995 as an engineer, and during his tenure, has helped shape the strategic direction for the Company in several leadership roles. Prior to becoming CEO, Amon served as president of Qualcomm. In that role, he steered development of a leading and differentiated product roadmap, spearheaded Qualcomm’s 5G strategy – as well as its acceleration and global roll out – and drove the expansion and diversification of the business to serve multiple industries. Additionally, he has overseen the successful execution of M&A to augment Qualcomm’s capabilities and accelerate growth in key areas, including RF Front End, Connectivity and Networking.
Previously, Amon led Qualcomm’s semiconductor business as president of QCT. He also held several technical and business leadership positions, which included having overall responsibility for Snapdragon® platforms.
Prior to Qualcomm, Amon served as chief technical officer for Vesper, a wireless operator in Brazil, and held leadership positions at NEC, Ericsson and Velocom.
Amon holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate from UNICAMP – Universidade Estadual de Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. He is a member of the USPTO Council for Inclusive Innovation.
Clips from This Episode
Cristiano explains his optimism in the face of inflation, supply shortages and more
On why "powerful technology transitions are actually very simple"
Cristiano discusses stakeholder capitalism and a focus on sustainability
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
My guest today is a key leader in an industry that is driving remarkable change and transformation for consumers, businesses, and stakeholders all around the world.
Cristiano Amon is President and CEO of Qualcomm, one of the world’s largest tech companies, which is powering massive changes in the global economy. Qualcomm’s semiconductor chips and work on the future of digital connectivity makes it one of the industry’s most powerful forces for new research and development. From smartphones, smart devices, smart factories, smart cities, to smart cars — Cristiano is in the business of making our world work smarter.
An engineer by training, Cristiano is a remarkable leader who has spent years driving improvements in Qualcomm’s technology. Since taking the reins of the seat as CEO of the company last year, he has helped navigate Qualcomm through a variety of global challenges, all the while working to anticipate the needs of its customers into the next decade. I’m thrilled to have Cristiano join me today to discuss his life and career, and get some wisdom that he has to offer to leaders from all walks of life.
Cristiano, welcome to “Leadership Matters.” It is such a pleasure to spend more time with you today.
Cristiano Amon
Very happy to be here talking to you, Alan. Thank you for having me.
Alan Fleischmann
I’m thrilled. We’ve had such wonderful conversations, I’m looking forward to our listenership getting to know you a little bit better. I’m sure that among them, there are people who have already been following you, and there are others who are looking forward to getting to know you better.
So let’s start with a little bit about your early life. You’re from Brazil. You grew up in the capital, São Paulo. What did your parents do? What was life like around the house growing up?
Cristiano Amon
Very good. So, I was born and raised in Brazil, educated in Brazil, that’s where I got my engineering degree. I’m more from the countryside of São Paulo state. I’m from São Paulo state, but from the countryside. It’s a city called Campinas, which is the second-largest city in that state. Growing up, I have a memory… I know a lot of people in America find it interesting when I tell this story. I remember when I was a kid, it was the time of hyperinflation. We had 30-40% inflation per month. I remember my dad would get his paycheck and we would all go to a station wagon to the supermarket. We would buy everything we needed that day.
But it was an interesting childhood, I was always very happy. I come from big families, a lot of cousins, a lot of friends. While San Diego is home for me — I’ve been here for about 27 years — I think my hometown is always gonna be home for me as well.
Alan Fleischmann
And is a lot of family still in Brazil?
Cristiano Amon
Yes. My mom and dad are in Brazil, and a lot of relatives in Brazil as well.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great. You went on to attend the State University of Campinas in Brazil, that’s where you studied electrical engineering. I think I told you this recently, I always think of engineers as people who like to fix things, which is very appropriate when I think of all the things you’re doing in Qualcomm. What was it like initially? What sparked your interest in being an engineer?
Cristiano Amon
Well, it’s two things. One, my dad was an electrical engineer as well, so I think that probably had a big influence. I always liked math and science. And I remember my dad said to me, I could go to any college I want, as long as it was a medical school, engineering school, or law school. So between those three options, I think engineering looked like a more natural choice for me.
Alan Fleischmann
You didn’t have many options, but you picked the right one for you. It sounds it’s a little bit of a family legacy as well.
Cristiano Amon
Yeah. But I always like to say, I’ve always been curious about things. I’ve always been intrigued by radio communications, that’s where I ended up building my career. I think having my dad as an engineer in the family was definitely an inspiration for me.
Alan Fleischmann
Amazing.
You went to Qualcomm not too long after you graduated, but what did you do in between?
Cristiano Amon
So I graduated in 1992. The early ’90s really were when you have the boom of the cellular industry. Still analog cellular — 1G at the time — but it was an industry that was really growing. I started working, and fortunately or unfortunately, I have been working in wireless and cellular my whole career.
I started my career working for a Japanese company called NEC. At the time, NEC was pretty big in cellular. It had some presence in the United States, but was also very big in Latin America and Japan. So I started working at NEC and a little bit over a year into the company, they transferred me to the headquarters. So the first time I left Brazil, I actually moved to Tokyo and I was working as a system engineer for NEC in Japan.
Part of the evolution at NEC at the time was looking into digital cellular, and we looked at a technology called CDMA that was created by Qualcomm. So as an employee of NEC, I came to San Diego. That was back in 1994. We were looking into discussions with Qualcomm into getting a CDMA license. Then soon thereafter, Qualcomm made me an offer, and I joined Qualcomm in 1995.
Alan Fleischmann
Was that with a Latin American focus at that point, or did that come later?
Cristiano Amon
During the time I was working at NEC, I think I started in Latin America. There was a lot of activity with the deployment of cellular to a number of countries. Then I joined Qualcomm in 1995. That was just before the very first CDMA launch that was in Hong Kong with Hutchison. At a time at Qualcomm, I’d done a lot of different things. It was early days of CDMA in cellular, so I spent a lot of time getting frequency allocated. Given my knowledge of Latin America, I traveled to virtually every country in South America trying to get CDMA adopted. At that time, we were working in Qualcomm in infrastructure. In those kind of the early days of CDMA, Qualcomm needed to prove it worked. So we had both infrastructure and the phone business.
So it was fun time. I spent a lot of time in Latin America early in my career, which was great.
Alan Fleischmann
Based out of San Diego?
Cristiano Amon
It was based out of San Diego. I was in the Brazil office for about a year and a half, and then Qualcomm transferred me to San Diego in late ’96, beginning of ’97.
Alan Fleischmann
And when did Vesper come into picture?
Cristiano Amon
That’s an interesting story, that’s a very good one.
So like I said, I started my career at in NEC, then Qualcomm. I left Qualcomm in about 1999. I spent about a year at Ericsson in infrastructure, but then, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to get different kinds of experience. In hindsight, I think it was the right choice. It really helped me become a more rounded business person. So I left Ericsson and I joined a VC out of Denver. It was company called VeloCom. Really, it was the TCI Cable management team. When they sold TCI Cable to AT&T, they put together a fund. They were going to invest in telecom and they would have a focus in Latin America. So I joined that company.
My boss at that time — who is still a dear friend and has been a great mentor in my career — was Nick Kauser. He was the CTO of McCaw Cellular, which was the very first cellular operator in the world. Then later, when McCaw was sold to AT&T, he became the CTO of AT&T. The reason I tell the story is because, during the battle at the time of Qualcomm’s CDMA versus TDMA, You had our founder, Dr. Irwin Jacobs, spearheading CDMA, and you had Nick spearheading TDMA. Then I left Qualcomm to go work for Nick, which was a great experience. So Nick was a great mentor.
At the time, we started investing in a lot of different companies in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina. Then the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, and we started divesting some of the investments. That’s where the Vesper thing came to bear. As part of dealing with the dotcom bubble burst, plus the divestment story, one of the investments that we had — together with an operator, Bell Canada — was going to go through a process similar to Chapter 11. They needed to put together a team to go do the restructuring of the company. So I raised my hand, and I was CTO of the company, later becoming COO. It was an interesting journey. I moved back to Brazil — that was some point in 2000 or 2001. It was a three-year journey to get a company that was basically bankrupt to positive EBITDA. Then we sold it to what is today América Móvil and I rejoined Qualcomm.
I don’t want to give you too many details, but that’s the context of Vesper. It was great experience for me, because working in a restructure environment, you learn a lot. So I think I gained about 10 years of experience in three.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing. The experience you had at Vesper must include things that you draw from even today, in your leadership position now.
Cristiano Amon
Absolutely. It gave me a whole different perspective about how to deal with adversity and crisis.
I remember somebody that I worked with in the Vesper restructure team, he always said, “Only in a crisis do you see the true quality of the management team you have.” I do think that, once you’re worried about making payroll, making taxes, and staying alive, and you have to re-invent the company, that gives you an incredible perspective on how to deal with adversity. Hopefully that has been helpful for me throughout my career at Qualcomm.
Alan Fleischmann
When you came back to Qualcomm, coming from being an investor, was the transition difficult in the new role? Because you’d been a leader at Vesper. So you had been doing that, and then you came over. I’m curious what skills you brought over, but also, was that transition hard?
Cristiano Amon
No, it wasn’t hard. I think it was very interesting timing. Let me tell you a little bit about that history and what was behind the timing of that transition.
One thing that I ended up building a reputation within Qualcomm for was to kind of go and solve problems. The Vesper experience was a tough experience, dealing with a restructuring. Then once that was over and we sold the company, I didn’t want to continue on an operator, I wanted to go back to the technology sector. Qualcomm approached me and said, “Look, we’d like you to come back to San Diego. We have a problem for you: CDMA.” This was a 2G and 3G time. CDMA in many different locations was being replaced by GSM as a technology, it was having a footprint reduction. Irwin was CEO of Qualcomm at that time and said, “Look, why don’t you come back? We want you to go back to run our CDMA business, on the chip side.”
That’s where I joined a Qualcomm chip division for the first time — back in the beginning of 2004 or 2005, if my memory serves me. It was kind of good timing. And it wasn’t that hard of a transition, because I was kind of back to my roots. That’s how I started my career. And it was a very interesting journey. Since then, we have done well with CDMA, the transition of that to 4G LTE, and then most recently, the transition to 5G.
Alan Fleischmann
You became president of Qualcomm in what, 2018? Then last year, obviously, you took over as CEO. What were your immediate goals upon taking over those two positions?
Cristiano Amon
Excellent question. I have a very clear answer to give to you.
When I became president in 2018, my number one goal here was to accelerate the global transition to 5G. In fact, you may have seen or not have seen, but a key milestone in that process was when we launched 5G one year ahead of schedule. We had an event at Mobile World Congress that pretty much every executive of every company that we partner with — from operators to infrastructure vendors, to test equipment, to manufacturers — was there at the Qualcomm booth, toasting that we’d done it. I think that was my number one objective.
I didn’t like the set of cards that we had with 4G. I think 5G was an acceleration — it was instrumental to resolve a lot of the disputes we had with some of our customers and change the position of Qualcomm. So that was my clear goal in 2018: how do we commercialize 5G one year ahead of schedule to drive that global transition from 4G to 5G?
The second thing, which I started as president and has been my key goal as CEO, is to diversify the company. We put in a lot of effort. It’s not easy, by the way, to build new core competences in companies and to be able to pivot. I’m not saying this to give myself any credit. I think this is a general statement that every CEO would agree with. If you’ve known your entire career how to do one thing very well, learning new things is a difficult thing to do. But you know, I was and I am in a hurry to diversify the company. We needed to build expertise in a different areas. Our front end was one, automotive was another one. And then, the broader transformation of the edge, which we call our Internet of Things business.
So my goal as CEO, going back to your question, is: how do I change Qualcomm from a company that has always been very focused in communications in cellular into the company that provides all the processing, the cloud connectivity, and the artificial intelligence for everything that happens outside the data center? We call that the edge. I think that’s the mission I set for myself to build at Qualcomm and that’s the journey we are on right now.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s very cool. That’s very exciting.
We’ve talked about this, but from the pandemic and supply chain shortages to inflation and fears of recession, I’ve been very struck by your optimism. You’re a CEO who, as I describe to others and I described here, believes in fixing things and knows that, among the vast empire of Qualcomm and the chipmaking industry in general, you’ve faced several challenges in the past. You know the demand, you know the need, you see the future. I’m just curious, how do you navigate this? What is your outlook?
Cristiano Amon
In your question, you probably gave part of the answer. In one way, we can’t be tone deaf to what the current environment is. But in another way, we have a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future.
I’ll break that down into two buckets. One bucket is the technology trends that are driving the transformation of the company. They are clearly in front of us and they are not going to change, whether we have inflation, or recession, or not. Those trends are very clear. Everything is becoming cloud connected. You have the merging of physical and digital spaces. You have the new work environment that is changing PCs into next-generation PCs. The car is becoming a connected computer on wheels, the automotive industry is changing. The list goes on and on. So my first reason to be optimistic is those technology trends are real, and we can actually cause transformation and be disruptive with our technologies.
This second bucket… It’s not that technical, but we dealt with the pandemic. We dealt with the massive supply chain disruption. So bring it on. We can deal with it. I think that’s what companies need to do.
Alan Fleischmann
What also strikes me so much is, when I talk to you and hear you speak about the global team, how much culture matters to you. This team of extraordinary engineers and folks on the front lines having that culture is, I think, something that you’re very proud of. Qualcomm kind of preserved and conserved during this period, but also advanced, which is important to you.
Cristiano Amon
It is the most important asset of the company. Not to start a whole new conversation, but that’s why, when I think about this new hybrid work environment that we’re all in, I spend a lot of time thinking, how do I preserve that culture?
Culture is one of the most important things we have. Because all we have is people. We’re the largest fabless semiconductor company, we don’t have any factories. All we have is people. I think a culture that is very grounded on deep engineering expertise, innovation, and solving some of the world’s biggest technology problems. And then, be motivated that the technology that every engineer works on will change the society. I think that’s one of the best assets of the company. I spend a lot of time making sure that we continue to reinforce, evolve, and preserve this culture that we have, which started in the very beginning when the company was a startup.
One of the things I have done as CEO is try to create a lot of connections between the Qualcomm of the early days with the Qualcomm of today, regardless of our size. When I became CEO, I had the very first town-hall meeting with all the employees. That was right after we had done our investor day presentation where we unveiled the new strategy of the company. I didn’t tell anybody — not even the teamed that helped me prep, because I want to make it a surprise — but I asked our founder, Dr. Irwin Jacobs, to be a special guest during my town-hall meeting to tell all of the new engineers at Qualcomm his advice on what’s really important when we think about the future of our company. I tell people, we are the world’s largest startup company and we need it to stay that way. We need to stay, nimble and fast, never be complacent.
Another thing that is unique about our culture, when I compare and contrast with some of our tech peers, is that we have a culture that is very collaborative. There’s not a lot of secrets, people don’t work in silos. One thing that I do — and I started doing this not without some opposition, but it was the right thing to do — every year, I put together an entire strategy on one piece of paper. I’ll tell you, unfortunately, it’s a big piece of paper. It’s not small, but we call it strategy on a page. We give that to every single employee in the company, it doesn’t matter what you do. That has proven to be incredibly powerful, because people know, when they come to work every day, how they are part of that company strategy. What they are doing, what their contribution is, and what their imprint is that they have on the strategy at the end of the day. Because we have a lot of smart people, it’s not about just the top management of the company telling them what to do. People can evolve and build on that strategy in incredible ways. I think that’s all part of how I define the Qualcomm culture. Like I said, in this hybrid work environment we are working very hard to try to preserve it, because it’s really important for our future.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing. Do you think that the employees, from all levels, feel that they’re kind of imagining and realizing that future? You explained this high-speed connectivity and how it’s going to be important to all kinds of businesses for years to come. Do you think, then, that when they’re working, they feel that whatever contribution they’re making is making that future?
Cristiano Amon
I think so. It’s interesting to ask this question, because that’s something I measure. Every time we have an all-hands meeting, we ask employees on an online survey right after the meeting to rate their confidence in the business. We’ve been up there in the 90%-plus, sometimes in the high 90%. I even joke with people, I say, “Look, this meeting was a three-hour meeting. If the confidence is low, we’re going to make it a five-hour meeting.”
But it’s incredibly powerful to really empower the organization with the strategy, to make everybody understand there is some logic to what we’re doing. What is the end game? What part can they play in this whole story? I think that’s the power of aligning an entire organization, it’s really incredible. I think the answer to your question is, I do feel that our employees understand and know what role they can play, and they believe in the future of the company.
Alan Fleischmann
I’m always struck by the fact that so many employees at Qualcomm can talk products and things that you’re creating, even if they’re not the inventor or the ones on the front lines dealing with it. Like with Snapdragon, which is a suite of chips. It’s very popular, there’s a lot of fans for it. I’m always struck by the fact that you can talk to anybody at the company and they’ll explain it. I’m curious — definitely explain what Snapdragon is and why it has so many fans. What is it that you do that makes everybody feel that that is theirs?
Cristiano Amon
Well, I think first, we’re primarily an engineering company. The absolute majority of our employees are engineers. We also have a very unique organizational structure. Since the beginning of the company, from our founder, we want to centralize engineering organization so that there’s a lot of synergies and exchanges of information. We incentivize a lot of exchange of information and the spread of knowledge within the organization.
The second aspect is the conversation we just had, which is, there’s an incredible amount of value in over-communicating. Not only the strategy, but also what we are going to build and how our products are going to make a difference, how they’re going to be differentiated. What are the key areas where we want to pursue excellence? That enables the various groups of employees in the company to figure out, based on their area of expertise, how they can build into and execute the plan. As a result, most people in the company today, they know exactly where we’re going, know exactly what we need to do, and know what parts they have to play in this whole game plan.
Alan Fleischmann
Seeing around the corner and anticipating the future for your customers is something I know you do at Qualcomm, it’s one of your strongest traits. What advice would you give to other leaders who are planning for the future and are listening to the show right now?
Cristiano Amon
Well, that’s a difficult question. In in a bizarre way, I think the most powerful things and the most clear technology transitions are, identically, very simple. They’re not complex. There’s actually beauty in the simplicity. What it is is really thinking about the actual problem that technology needs to solve.
I’ll tell you this by telling a little bit of a story about the company — I’ll start with the past, and then I’ll bridge to the conversation on the future. When we started, the reason Qualcomm invented CDMA and used CDMA as a digital cellular technology — which became the foundation of 3G cellular — was to solve a very simple problem. We saw the value proposition of having a phone and for you to carry your phone with you. That was the cellular experience. How do we make sure that everybody in the world could have a cellphone? How do you make use of the radio spectrum — that was basically walkie-talkie, that was analog cellular — in the way that everybody could have a cellphone?
That was the basis of creating CDMA. Then, the next big challenge for the company was, could we bring broadband data to a cellphone? Well, once you bring broadband data through the cellphone, you need the cellphone to become a computer. Can we create a set of technologies that enable a computer to fit in the palm of your hand? That’s what gave birth to the smartphone and our processing capabilities in our semiconductor business, versus being just focused on radio communications.
Where we are right now is thinking, what is the next computing platform? How do you bring the technologies that have been pioneered and expanded in mobile to every single device outside the data center and connect them to the data center? For example, when I think about the next computing platform, we may have an argument whether that’s going to take five years or 10 years, but we know that there’s a lot more that you can do with this computer in the palm of your hand, with a smartphone, that right now is artificially limited by the screen size. So, if you could make the next computing platform fully immersive augmented-reality glasses, you no longer have the limitation of the small screen. And when you think about high-speed connectivity to the cloud, you don’t even have the limitation of computing power. You can have unlimited computing, as much computing as you need, as you tap the ability of the cloud. So if we understand that that is the direction we’re all going, if we have that clarity of vision, then how do we think about the technologies that will make that a reality?
This second part of the answer may not be applicable to everyone in every company. But that’s something that I had said when we were trying to commercialize 5G and trying to get technologies such as millimeter wave, which is higher frequencies — frequencies of 20 gigahertz or all the way to the high 40s — to work in a cellphone environment. Everybody said it was impossible, it’s not going to work in a full mobility environment. We’ve proven it is. Verizon’s 5G network has millimeter wave. So it’s about, can we make the impossible inevitable? Can we use that mode of thinking, especially when we think about some of those technologies? I think that’s kind of what has been driving us to be really pushing the roadmap and innovation forward.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing.
Now, President Biden recently signed the CHIPS Act, which is set to transform that whole industry, the semiconductor manufacturing landscape. How are you working to adapt and leverage the changes that are coming in the industry? It’s not even adapt; how are you leading? Because everything you do seems to be leading. So, how does that affect you and how are you taking full advantage of this?
Cristiano Amon
This is actually a great development for the semiconductor industry. It was incredible to see bipartisan support to get the thing done.
I will start, Alan, by telling you that we all learned something with the supply chain crisis of semiconductors. I think we all learned that semiconductors are very important. They are required to build F150 pickup trucks, to any home appliance, to PCs, to phones, to everything. I think the current society runs on semiconductors. Our cloud economy runs in semiconductors.
A company like Qualcomm — which is the largest fabless semiconductor company — if we don’t have a resilient and geographically diversified supply chain, it’s a problem. Now, yes, it’s easy for me to talk about it being a problem for Qualcomm, a fabless company. But it’s a problem for our society. We saw what happens if we don’t have access to semiconductors. It is a critical ingredient when we think about the economy and everything else that is happening with digital transformation, with every enterprise, with a more sustainable future for everybody. It all relies on things that are going to be built on top of a semiconductor.
If you look at the current situation, you have a high concentration in Asia. If you put geopolitics aside, just think about natural disaster alone. You have a very high concentration in Taiwan, and then in Korea, of all the semiconductor production of the world. The US CHIPS Act, in combination with the EU Chips Act — combine the two of them, it’s almost like $95 billion of funds — is to create incentives so that those two geographies become competitive for companies to install manufacturing capacity. At the end of the day, this is good for Qualcomm and it is good for everybody else, because it’s such an important ingredient of the of the future economy. We need to have a resilient supply chain.
Alan Fleischmann
You were elected the chairman of the US Semiconductor Industry Association this year. I’m curious, with the CHIPS Act now having passed, I imagine that changes your priorities for the Association going forward?
Cristiano Amon
Look, one of the key priorities of the SIA was to get that US CHIPS Act passed and to it get into law, to get it into the process of implementation, to build manufacturing capacity for semiconductors in the United States. That will continue to be the mission. The way we look at it, I think the importance of having a fabless company in the chair position this year is, as a fabless company, we’re going to be the customer of those manufacturing plants that are a result of the CHIPS Act.
If you look at today, we’re the number two customer of TSMC in Taiwan — we’re a very close second to Apple, which is the number one. We’re the number one customer of Samsung in Korea. We’re the number one customer of GlobalFoundries in the United States. We’re the number one customer of SMIC in China. So if you build the foundry, you need the customer. I think that’s the role that we can play. That’s why we have been very involved with all of our manufacturing partners as it a relates to building capacity in the United States and Europe.
Alan Fleischmann
So you’ve got 50,000 employees. You have customers of all shapes and sizes — I love when you talk about the transformation in the automobile industry. You’ve got technology impacting every corner of the globe. You have so many stakeholders to keep in mind. What are your thoughts on stakeholder capitalism, and how have you thought to respond to a movement that’s out there, not just for Qualcomm? How do you make business be more responsible and take that on that responsibility? How do you deal with that, both internally but also, frankly, externally?
Cristiano Amon
Let me start by talking about the role of the industry, indirectly, in a lot of the conversations that happen today. I would argue, Alan, that we are not getting the credit we deserve for the incredible transformations we make. Let’s start by talking about, can we make everything more energy efficient? Can we make economic growth a lot more sustainable, focused on sustainability? We don’t use a lot of energy, given the nature of our business. But if you look at what we have done indirectly… Look at your phone today. You don’t have a portable music player. You don’t have a portable video player anymore. You don’t have a camera anymore. The number of devices that got incorporated into the smartphone, and therefore, the resulting efficiency and energy consumption is incredible. The smartphone became the number one consumer electronic device.
But it doesn’t stop there. Look, for example, at the 5G contribution. As everything becomes connected and becomes more intelligent, we have indicated that 5G has a massive contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. I can go even to say, a fully mature 5G network with its benefits for the automotive industry, including intelligent transportation, could have a reduction in the order of 20%-plus. So, I think the technology transformation that we see right now across virtually every enterprise — using things that we do, such as advanced connectivity; high-performance, low-power computing; and on-device artificial intelligence — has made an incredible contribution that I think, as an industry, we’re probably not getting credit for. But we’ll keep pushing forward, because it’s the right thing to do.
I think the second part of your question is… It’s fascinating, it may be that’s a broader conversation. But it’s fascinating to see how the technology that we have developed has empowered people. Just the look at how the smartphone, the ability to communicate and be heard, has empowered people. It’s been part of this incredible opportunity to listen to a lot of different opinions, and this society is very vocal. I think that’s a good thing. That’s what I kind of said early on; one of the motivations for a lot of the engineers at the company is that the work that we do will change the society, and you’ll be able to see it the impact. I cannot think of anything that has empowered more people than the smartphone.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s amazing. Now with 5G technology still being rolled out, it has the potential to impact business kind of like you’re talking about with the smartphone, in the future as well as what it’s done to us today. What impact do you think that you’ll have on business across a variety of industries? And then, how should business leaders be thinking about the rollout of 5G, how it impacts their thinking, planning and doing?
Cristiano Amon
This is a great question. Look, 5G is a very transformative technology. I’ll go back to the conversation I had with you before about every generation of wireless. What was the problem to be solved? The problem to solve with 5G is, could we design an air interface — like a radio communication interface for phones — that will deal with the following directives: Can we build a gigabit society, where everybody has gigabit speeds, like a wireless fiber-type space? Can we deal with congestion? A simple problem that 5G solves is, if you go to a concert or a stadium today with 4G, you don’t have enough bandwidth. You can’t record high-definition video and upload it to social media. 5G comes to deal with congestion and makes sure that everybody has access to gigabit speeds. And then, can that be a universal, last-mile connectivity for everything, across not only phones, but every single device around the clock? I think what we’re starting to see right now is that it has not been designed just for phones; it is designed for those billions of devices out there. We’re starting to see the impact in a number of different industries as they go through the process of digital transformation.
Let me take healthcare as an example. I’m just going to give some example of the early demonstrations we’ve had when we’re rolling out 5G. So in the UK, one of the things that got deployed was 5G-connected first responders, 5G-connected ambulances. So you could have a first responder come in. By the time you put the person inside the ambulance, you now have the ability to do connected-to-5G image exams. You can do like an ultrasound, and then you have the reliability and the bandwidth to stream that to the hospital. The triage is already happening, the diagnosis is already happening. That’s having a very positive impact. Another example is the broad application of telemedicine, which we saw really happened during the pandemic.
Now let me change to retail. When you go think about retail, retail business has changed dramatically. Now, every retail company has to add ecommerce on top of their retail operations, especially the brick and mortar. We see an incredible amount of transformation enabled by the combination of 5G; high-performance, low-power computing; and artificial intelligence on how you manage real-time inventory. You have to manage the inventory at the shelf, because you’re selling both to people in the store as well as people online and you need to manage inventory at the shelf. You have to deal with a completely different experience of how you navigate to the store to pick up somebody’s order, how to do self-checkout.
Then I’m going to move the conversation to energy. We’re working with a utility company in Europe with 5G-connected substations. You can basically have a digital twin of the entire grid and be able to increase the operating point of the grid, which means it becomes more efficient.
The list is countless. I think that 5G, combined with high-performance computing, on-device artificial intelligence, and on-demand computing, is really transforming every enterprise. One last topic I want to mention is this, Alan: one of the least understood capabilities of 5G is what we call on-demand computing. I’ll explain this because it’s very, very powerful. If you think of 5G as this fiber-type link between your device — whether your device is a phone, a robot, a computer — to the cloud, you can think about them as the same computer, just connected together. So if you need more computing power, you can just harness on-demand the power of the cloud.
You probably hear companies like Microsoft and Satya — who is somebody I really admire — talking about the future of computing as hybrid computing. I agree with him 100%. You are going to make seamless the cloud and the device, which is completely transparent to you. I think that’s the key attribute of 5G.
Think about this, for example, when we think about the new hybrid work environment. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we had to cancel our presence in Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it got cancelled. But we decided to have a virtual event and have a demonstration. One of things we showed… and nobody really talked about it, I was so surprised. I said, “Why is nobody talking about this? This is so incredible.” And this was the very beginning of the pandemic. We showed a laptop, just an ultra-portable laptop, and somebody was doing professional 8k video editing in the cloud, connected to 5G. It was just doing the workload in the cloud, it was completely transparent to you. In normal circumstances, you need a big workstation to do it. We said, “This is the future.” Well, interesting. Then all of a sudden, everybody got sent home and people could not carry a workstation from their office. That’s the moment people realized, the future of computing is hybrid computing. 5G can play an important role. I think that’s an incredible capability of 5G that is not very well understood today.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s fascinating, and obviously, illuminating about where we’re going and where the future is going to be.
You’ve had, Cristiano, an amazing career. You’re young, so you’ve got many years and many achievements still to come. What advice would you give to aspiring men and women who would like to be CEOs, or are newly named CEOs, who are listening to the show? What would you say to encourage them to step up?
I also think that you’re a great example of someone who empowers people around you. You don’t have to be a CEO to be a great leader, and you’ve empowered wonderful people around you who are making an enormous difference in a teamwork environment and collaborative environment. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that as well.
I just want to remind everybody you’re listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann, and I’m here with Cristiano Amon, who’s the President and CEO of Qualcomm. We’re talking about the fascinating future that Qualcomm is delivering on, imagining the future that technology is going to deliver on, and discussing life lessons and some leadership lessons that this remarkable CEO is sharing with us as well.
Cristiano Amon
Thank you, Alan. I’ll answer that question by saying, I don’t know if the advice is going to be any good, because I’m going to give it for free. But the advice that I always gave myself as I managed my career... Really, it’s a couple of things.
First, set the bar high. Have a goal which is very ambitious. I think that really worked well for me, and I think once you set that bar, then you needed to focus on understanding how you get there. Second thing: surround yourself with people that are better than yourself and can do your job better than you do. That’s a number-one, I think, recipe for success. If I look at my career, the ability to really identify and, as you said, empower people… The power of people is really incredible, especially if you align everybody.
The other thing is… It’s interesting. Qualcomm has had, and it still has, a very matrix-kind of environment. People in our company don’t exercise leadership based on the org chart, that’s not enough. I think the ability to exercise leadership by influencing people, by being able to bring everybody on board and share your vision, has also been very important for me. It’s old school, in my opinion, the CEOs who want to be feared. I don’t want to be feared. I want to be perceived as a member of the team. It’s just a privilege to be able to lead a lot of smart people. It’s about being recognized as a leader and respected, based on what you can bring to the decisions and how you actually bring people together.
So that’s some advice that has been very useful for me in my career. Last one is, I learned something from a mentor which was really helpful. I always tried to understand the line that divides my area of competence from my area of incompetence. Once you really understand where that line is, then you know what you need to do to move that line forward. I think most people don’t spend time understanding what you’re really good at and what you’re not good at. It’s that saying, you don’t know what you don’t know. I think that has been very useful and helpful for me, especially when I think about the people that I want to have in my organization. I try to get a lot of people that are really, really good in the areas that I’m not. That has been very useful for me my entire career.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that you mentioned your mentors. That’s an important thing that, I know, is a big part of the culture at Qualcomm, it’s a big part of your journey. You celebrate mentorship and you celebrate the mentors that have been in your life — some of your family members, I’m sure, your parents, but also people on the outside. Tell us a little bit about the mentors and how you would encourage others to not only seek out mentors, but create a culture of mentorship.
Cristiano Amon
Absolutely. It’s really important. Look, I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m trying to, in this hybrid work environment, make sure that a few days in the week, people can still come to the office and have an experience of meeting other people and exchange ideas, so people that have been in the company and have experienced it can share it. That’s a very important part of our innovation culture.
Alan Fleischmann
And how do you deal with work-life balance? It’s a terrible term, I don’t believe it exists. I think there’s no such thing as that balance. But you’re very committed to your family and you’re very committed to community. How do you how do you manage that and manage being CEO?
Cristiano Amon
That’s, I think, a very difficult topic. I think it’s probably true for our company that… I agree with you, work-life balance is a difficult equation. Especially in our industry, which is very fast paced, and in a company like Qualcomm right now, which is transforming. We have a lot to do.
I’m not doing as well in this area as I would like. But speaking about what is right, I think you have to find some balance. At least for me, you need to have time to spend with your family, you need to have time to do things that are going to be good for you, you need to have time to think. It’s about making use of every opportunity you have.
But that also speaks to, when you’re talking about work-life balance… I want to use this one more time to talk about the importance of the company culture. If you think about a very bad work-life balance, what you realize is you’re spending as much time with your co-workers — and sometimes, more time with your co-workers — than you’re spending with your own family. So they need to be family too. And I think that it’s important to have a very good culture, especially as we deal with the amount of time we spend at work.
Alan Fleischmann
You’ve been listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. Cristiano Amon, the President and CEO of Qualcomm, has been our guest.
Cristiano, it has been such a pleasure to talk about the future, to talk about what you, your colleagues, and team are building a Qualcomm to envision that future. I know it’s in good hands. The things you’ve shared today are remarkably wonderful, and I know they are appreciated by everybody listening. So thank you for joining me today.
Cristiano Amon
Thank you very much. Pleasure talking to you.