 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Good afternoon. My name is Ray Tsuchiyama with a guest on a show called All About Leadership. This is Think Tech Hawaii, and we're going to explore today what it takes, what it really takes to run and manage complex operations in the Asia Pacific region with a guest whom I have known since we were neighbors in the Hiroo area of Tokyo. And this is a topic that many young people in Hawaii, ever since I did the first All About Leadership show, has been asking me, how can we prepare ourselves? So how can we get insights and advice to really do complex operations and management in the Asia Pacific region? Welcome to my left is Alvin Miyazato. And where were you born and raised? Well, Ray, first of all, I want to thank you for inviting me here. This is a favorite topic of mine. I was born in, actually, Honolulu. I grew up primarily in Kanioa, the Woodward site. Went to the public school system, Castle High School, and then from there I went to the University of Hawaii. And what did you study there at the University of Hawaii? Well, it's kind of an interesting story for myself. I actually started up in engineering. My father was an engineer, and I actually was quite good in math and science. So my sophomore year, the professor said, hey, one of the special projects for all of you coming in engineering is take an egg, put it in an egg, build some kind of container, we're going to drive it on the fifth floor and see if it cracks. And I at that point said, this doesn't sound as interesting to me as what they're doing in the College of Business, which is starting different kind of businesses, selling products. So that day, actually, I didn't change to the College of Business. And I studied accounting. Oh, OK, all right. And when you studied accounting, what did you think you were going to do in the future? Yeah, it's a good question. I thought I would stay in Hawaii, become a CPA. There are large established CPAs here. People roll through the ranks. You can do pretty well. There's a lot of opportunities to see different kinds of businesses. That's what I thought I'd be doing, and kind of progressing that way. And I think like a lot of my peers at that time, we were all ambitious in trying to really excel, kind of make something bigger for what we were doing in Hawaii, showing off the University of Hawaii that it was great top talent. And so you did work in Honolulu for a couple of years? Yeah, I had a chance to interview a number of companies. I actually ended up with Price Waterhouse. I was very impressed with the clientele. Because basically, you kind of learn through the experience you go through. And much to my learning was they actually had the largest retail in Hawaii, which nobody knew at that time, duty-free shops, great learning. And they also had a pretty good national program in training and development. So I was doing that for two years. After that, I realized accounting is interesting in the sense of you get to see a lot of businesses, but you tend to look at historical information. Okay, right. And someone then later told me, you know, you can decide if you want to play ball or keep score. Okay. I said, gee, keeping score is interesting. I think playing ball would be interesting too. So then I decided I wanted to go away for school. Right. And one of my managers there decided to take me on his wing. And he actually went to Wharton. So he encouraged me to go apply. I did apply to Wharton. I got some recommendations from some of the people at the University of Hawaii as well. And I ended up going to Wharton. And so you took your MBA there at the Wharton School? Yes. And then it's part of the University of Pennsylvania, am I correct? Yes. In Philadelphia, which is quite cold today. And so was there something unique that you gained at Wharton that made you aware of global enterprise? Yeah, I would say there was two things. First, by chance, I happened to join the Asia Club. Oh. And I said by chance because, you know, we were getting together and someone said, let's go, and so I went. And it was interesting to see the students from all the other Asia countries. Some of them were coming from the wealthy family in a generous fashion. Some were just like myself kind of going on. But seeing the people there and listening to them of their opportunities they're having, what challenge are you going? Because at that point when you're there in the 80s, this is the mid-80s, you know, Japan was growing. Other countries were kind of seeing Japan as a role model. Korea's kind of coming up as well. Taiwan is kind of coming up. But you see all these different perspectives and how they were trying to work that through. And for me, that was a very intriguing opportunity. And the second one? Well, you know, as I started working through that, the second one was, you know, getting good professors. Oh, OK. Yeah. I remember one of my first semesters I took a class in marketing, which, you know, my major was in finance. Right. I was very much a numbers kind of person. But this professor came from Harvard. His name was David Redstein. And he used a Socratic method. And, you know, he'd really kind of pull us to think about things in a more holistic manner as opposed to just the functional. But then he also had us think about, you know, really think about what does the customer want. Right. Which, you know, very common sense. Right, right. But it doesn't get practical. Right. Yeah. And then how did you get into your role in Intel, of course? So after I graduated from Morden, I had a chance to work at different places. I actually was here in Hawaii for my internship at Pacific Resources. Oh, PRI. PRI. Of that period, yeah. And when I graduated, I ended up working for Standard Oil of Indiana. Right. You know, a very large company. You learn a lot of good skills. It was tremendous in the sense of you get good analytical training. You see, in my case, I was the analyst looking at the Middle East. I was doing Egypt. And so you see a lot of what was going on for government negotiation. And where were you based? Well, you was in Chicago. I was in Chicago, right? Yeah. So I went from one cold city to a more cold city, which was more. But you were in the energy field. I was in the energy field, right? Doing that, you know, what was the positive of Standard Oil was you learn quite a bit. I mean, they have a very rigorous method of probably looking at situations. They teach and groom you quite well. There's a very clear, structured ladder. But for myself, I thought about this and I said, you know, I have a very different culture myself. I was much more, I think, informal. Right. And at that time, I said to read about these odd companies in some place called Silicon Valley, where basically, you know, they dress not in Suzie tie, with kind of regular clothes. You know, they get to express their opinions as opposed to just waiting. And so there was an ad in the Wall Street Journal. I applied for it. I remember going in for the interview. And it's a great story. I sat down and then this lady came in. I thought, oh, I'm going to get coffee. She started to ask me very hard questions. Throughout the day, I met three or four people. And this was in where? In California? In Arizona. In Arizona. In Arizona. All right. And each of these persons were in finance. They were looking for a financial analyst for one of their businesses, a senior finance analyst. And what impressed me was, one, they were very informal, but very astute. OK. And they're very committed to what they were doing. And they were very rigorous in trying to find out that you knew what you were supposed to know. Yeah, exactly. OK. And you know, it was interesting because at that time, Intel at that time was about a billion dollar company. Not that large. Very, very small at that. Yeah. Now, at that time, though, people were aware of the PC and CPUs and a person named Andrew Grove, who was an immigrant to the United States. And that whole story was not really well known. What did you know about the semiconductor business before you entered Intel? I actually knew very little at coming into Intel. I had some understanding of the company itself. But what I was fortunate enough that when I joined this business, it was systems interconnect business, the focus was on getting some large deal. OK, right. And so at that time, Intel was about a billion dollar company. And actually, I quickly, in the first few months, got put on a deal that if we had won it, it was an IBM deal to build the actual PCs for IBM. It would have been over 500 million dollars. That would have been a substantial enlargement of the company. Yeah, so there was a lot of focus. But what really impressed me on that was the amount of delegation and trust leadership showed. I mean, it wasn't like they'd have you do the analysis. They'd have you give recommendations. But they didn't want you to own working, moving forward with the team to go negotiate the deal. And so it worked out pretty well. At the end, we actually decided not to take the deal because we thought if we actually won IBM, other OEMs may not take our process. Oh, right. So it was a very interesting strategic discussion that got entered. It says, we can actually win this deal, but it's going to be good for our long run. You had to be agnostic, as we say. Yeah, and you can sell to many, many companies. And that's one thing that Groot brought into the discussion. He said, we've got to think about this. Are we short term or long term? And what are they trade off? And the other side was after the first year, I was there. That's when we exited memory. So there was a huge hole in the line as well from that. But he said, we're going to make a bet. Micro processes looks like it could have opportunity. And he focused the company on that. So in hindsight, that's called making a bet the company bet. That you would get out of what would become a commodity business, the memory chip business. I was in the semiconductor business for the catalog devices. But that was going to be not the way for the future to gain a high margin business. And the CPU was it. And tell me, again, you define for the audience, what is a CPU? Yeah, basically a CPU, a central processing unit, is kind of like the brains of the community. It does a lot of the processing analytics. It helps to really ensure that problems can get solved mathematically. So it really is a central part of how you kind of look and compute for the industry. Now in the beginning, the CPU was in laptops and PCs. Now they're in all kinds of tablets and, of course, mobile devices too. So the market has exapotentially enlarged since that time. Yeah, this was something that Gordon Moore was one of the founders of Intel. And he quoted, he had this axiom. The Moore's Law, which is actually an economic law, which is that the cost of computing would basically fall in half every couple of years. He said it would be 18 months. And sure enough, we were actually going on that path. So that's why today what would have cost like a supercomputer back when I started is basically in a smartphone today. And it cost $60. Really, it's made for the ASPs on this. And it's continued on. Now that Moore's Law, unfortunately, did not translate to areas like the automobile. And we laughed at that. But if that was, of course, in the automobile industry, we would get a billion miles to a gallon. And the car would cost $100. But that didn't happen. You're right. And we don't see that. Unfortunately, Gordon Moore didn't go to the automobile industry today. But what's interesting is, you know how the mature industries right now are using data, like in automobiles are becoming much more data intensive. So you kind of see this where, as you said, the cost of computing has gone down still significantly that a lot of other industries are using this to basically drive competitive advantage. And you know, good experiences for all of us. Now, you talked about two people, Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove. What are the impacts on Intel? Different impacts into the world? What are the influences? I think there's two, at least, in the room. So there's another founder named Bob Noyce. Right, right. Noyce, yes, yes, yes. He was a very good employee. Artificial semiconductor, yeah, yeah. And he was one of the more, he was one of the clear leaders. But he had a point about, don't be encumbered by the past. Do something great and look in the future. Gordon was more the strategic visionary. He'd say, we should think forward. And then Grove, at that point, when he first came on, he was very much the execution guy. Up to the script everything through. I think what Intel really helped was driving the idea of Moore's law into practical volume. Because if you couldn't really manufacture huge volumes, then you wouldn't see the industry evolve the way it has. And was there impact, of course, from universities, like MIT, Stanford, and others? What influence did that have on the development of products at Intel? I think it's really important that when you first think about compute, people didn't understand or didn't appreciate how pervasive this could be. I think Andy Grove for a long time thought, well, this is a market process. This is something that businesses would use. Consumers really see that, maybe not. But this is where the schools started to have different usage models. They took it to the students. The students who are very capable started to develop different kinds of programs for the whole engineering, scientific, and education. Yeah, yeah. And that's how you had Excel come out, or actually, I think it was VisitK out. It came out from, I think, in Boston. Lotus123, yeah. And so those kind of models that allow people to say, hey, there's some consumer opportunities here, in addition to business, that now we see it's very much a consumer given. It drives all these. And so how did it become a global business? How did the Silicon Valley and Arizona and some other spots in the US go out and start its plans all over the world? What was the drivers for that? Yeah, at Intel, one of the things that we started to realize, and this is clearly something that was realized by the founders and the senior manager, at that time I was just finance manager, was there was tremendous opportunity international. And we're going to hold that point, and we're going to come back to the expansion as a Pacific after this break, right? Well, I'm Keeley Ikeena, and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock PM on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii together. In Hawaii together, we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together, working together for a better economy, government, and society. So I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 PM on Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Join us for Hawaii together. I'm Keeley Ikeena. Aloha. It's RB Kelly. I'm your host of Abbot the Comfort Zone, where I find cool people with cool solutions to problems that all of us face. Now, the thing is, we're really cool, and I only invite really cool people, but the thing is I think you're kind of cool too, so I think you should come and watch. That Thursdays at 11 AM here on OC16 Television with Think Tech Hawaii. I'm RB Kelly, host of Abbot the Comfort Zone, and I will see you next Thursday. We are back on all of our leadership on Think Tech Hawaii on this lovely afternoon with my friend, Al Miyasato. And we're just about talking about internationalization in the high-tech industry called semiconductors. Go ahead. So at that time, Intel at that point, this would be about the late 80s, early 90s, saw that Japan had tremendous technology innovation going on, and those companies are looking through there. So there was a big push to see how we could leverage that technology in for Intel. The other side of what Asia offered was very low-cost manufacturing and R&D development help. So we actually established the first plant. I think our first international plant ever was in Malaysia. Malaysia. The other thing that we started to realize was while China was a little bit closed, the opportunity given the population was huge. And Intel had done, based on the US work, was that as economies moved to middle income, we actually had to analyze the computing purchasing increase. And so when you kind of looked at the China market, you saw a tremendous potential. So getting into China was very important. So working on how we interest that was very important as well. So right now, you're the former head of Asia, Asia Region for Finance Leadership Development for Intel. Now, what was the job that took you to Japan, the first one? So I was asked to come in to be the control of Japan. At that time, Japan was about an $800 million enterprise. There was a lot of opportunity given the electronics and also just the natural Japanese-interested technology. And so we were on this path with the local management to focus on how we can grow that TAM double in a few years. And so that's kind of what Simon and I had won, as well as how we rationalized it. And did you want to go to Japan at that point? Had you ever spoken Japanese? Did you say, I want to go because I want to go there to expand my knowledge? What got you there? It's a great question. So I'm Japanese. I don't speak Japanese. But I have always had an interest to go there. I remember that the job opened up. I applied. And I thought, given my background, I had a great chance. I didn't get even an interview. And they told me, we're giving the job to somebody else. And so my boss said, don't worry. He said, just continue to do good work. And actually, this was Andy Bryant, who was at time to see the division controller. Two years later, I get this call. And they said, hey, remember that you wanted to go to Japan? If you want the job, the senior CFO is here. You fly down tomorrow. And he was willing to hire you. I flew it out. So it's a very interesting story. It's a story of, I think if you want to have something, you should go after it and let people know. Right, right, right. And so how many years did you spend in Japan at that point? I spent two years in Japan at that point. And we continued the work of increasing the market. And by the time I left, we had doubled the business. And then you came back to Arizona after that? I went to Oregon after that. Oregon, I'm sorry. Working on the supply chain for some of the components. And then from there? From there, I got a call to say, the CFO until Japan is retiring. Do you want to come back as the CFO? Because one of the things I had done at the last one was, we were based in Tsukuba. And Tokyo was our center of action. So we had made a proposal to move the headquarters to Tokyo. And now this is kind of moving forward. And Tsukuba is, and still is, a center for all kinds of R&D. And there's a great university there at Tsukuba University. And so you spent another stint in Japan for Intel as a CFO. And as you're moving in your career, getting larger and larger responsibility. And then from Japan, where did you go? After Japan, I was asked to go back to the US. But I had met my fiance and my wife. So I ended up taking a job in Asia again. And I went to Philippines because at that point they were expanding the footprint. Intel at that time, this was about the early 2000s now, was looking at Asia as being a major growth center. And so they could see that as a percent of company revenue would double in about five to 10 years. So that means more manufacturing. And so we're looking at how we expand the manufacturing. Now, would you say that having Intel operations, a plant or more than one in the Philippines and hiring people, did that boost up the high tech kind of capabilities of the country? It definitely did. That point, Intel was the largest exporter of country. And so you could see that that had a big impact. Plus it was technology. And we bring in people, we train them on the technology. Because even running an assembly plant takes a lot of expertise. So that was very important. The other side was teaching people, managing practices, basic manager practices was important so that we could run the plant 24 by seven to meet the demand. And so whatever it's setting expectations, how you inspire people. Because the silent Intel is, we need people to speak up so that you can get the best answer as opposed to command style, which is basically do as I say. This is much more of, okay, we need the best answer. Let's understand what it is. We have process that we have to follow, of course. And we have policies to make it happen. But if you have innovation, you've got to be able to listen. And that's one of the things about the leadership and we have. And then you were in China for how many years? Well, I was in Hong Kong for, well, I've been in Hong Kong now for over 10 years. My charter was regional. And so based on that, I was there when we started up the Chengdu facility. That was part of our plans where, as you know, as you go look at opportunities, a lot of companies will say, I'm going to start up a plan. But the challenge for the opportunity is, can you drive a government agenda? That's part of the leadership challenge. And it kind of was saying, we want to have more business in the West. Chengdu started up. And Dalin was the same thing, it's moved to the North. And Chengdu is where Mao Zedong is from. And it's not in the more urbanized area of China. I mean, this is quite a pioneer effort when you went out to Chengdu. Yeah, very much like any leadership challenges, you want to go out and set a new agenda. In our case, Chengdu government was extremely smart in that they said, if we can get a large M&C here, we can attract a large M&C. And so we were the first ones to go there. Before we go into even more of that, I want to ask the question that I think many young people in Hawaii would like to ask you, based on all your experiences, Asia Pacific, working for a high tech company, Fortune 100 company like Intel, what advice would you give them in terms of preparing themselves a career in high technology or Asia Pacific? Or are there things you found in your background growing up in Hawaii that were of value that nobody really thought about? Yeah, I would say one of the things that I benefited from in Hawaii was the diversity of the cultures. We have so many people from so many different backgrounds here that it's very easy to start to get to know people and appreciate the different cultures and similarities as well. That actually helped me in my various jobs because even in the US, we would be talking to people in Europe and Asia. When I went to Asia, it was interesting as you were trying to talk to someone in the Philippines and trying to see how you motivate them or drive change there, as well as working with people in Malaysia. But it was just something that I feel very comfortable with because of the background I had. I think the other aspect I would encourage young people to think about is you need to let people know what you want to go do in the future. And as simple as that sounds, I have a number of people who are a mentor and they tell me their concern with that is if they tell their boss, they want to have a job different than the current job, the boss will not care about them as much. But if you're not willing to take the risk, people won't help you. The reason I got the job in Hong Kong was I told my boss, I need to go back because of my wife. And I said, I may need to leave Intel. He said, don't make any hasty decisions, something will happen. And sure enough, two weeks later, I got a call to go to Asia. Wow, yeah. So it was very unplugged. Now you involved into a financial leadership development within the company and the regional kind of thing. What did that entail? What kind of people were you kind of developing and what kind of skill sets were really focused on? So in Asia, as we looked at it, we had like a number of expats from finance management. Expatriates who were living in Asia, go ahead. And at that time, part of the Asia talent was basically compliance, just basically recording transactions. It was clear that as Intel was going to grow, we needed more decision capable support, more what we call business partnership, being able to act as the business manager. That means having them move from, say, a narrow focus on a process to more kind of analytic. It also meant them having a local focus, a more global regional focus. To understand how the different parts were going to play together, as well as then having them have a network, so they can be able to go out and call off. And that recorded some difference. Was the network within the company or outside the company? Both. But at that point it was primarily in the company so they could pick up the phone. Just like I think a lot of things are done, is you've got to be able to pick up the phone and talk to them. And that being able to talk quickly is important because when you've got people 1000 miles away from headquarters, the headquarters will be able to trust that people make the right decision. And so that takes a lot of confidence. How about the tours that we hear more about? Diversity and inclusion. Yeah, so at Intel, we had this philosophy, and I think it's true of a lot of companies where inclusion is not just about race or religion. So how do you get the best ideas from all the people? And so we would spend a lot of time. In fact, one of the interesting discussions we had is how about gender? Diversity, right? And we were focused about how can we continue to improve on that? Because actually in finance, we actually had over half the managers were women. Right. And so we wanted to ensure that we could continue building our pipeline. But inclusion was very important so that you make people feel belonging. So they then will express their ideas. If you're confident that they could drive change, and they'll tell you about what they're comfortable with. If they don't feel that sense of comfort, that sense of they can trust, then you won't get that interaction, which is so important in understanding what kind of business opportunities there are. Well, it seems that this expressing ideas is a big area. And of course, it's drive to innovation because where does the ideas come from? Is it always a native people? Or can you train people to develop and express ideas? Yeah, I think it's a combination. I think for some people, I think as they grow up, one of our colleagues in China had an interesting comment. He says, you want us to express our ideas to challenge the status quo. You understand that in China, if we challenge the status quo, we may get persecuted. Right, right. And it's very enlightening kind of conversation. But we were talking about that. We said, yes, you're right. We're looking for something different here. And so we need to have a different approach of how we have these people come up and discuss it with us. In our case, we put them together with people from different cultures. And Chuen said, these people are very smart, they're very capable. And in that culture, they were able to express opinions and come up with some good ideas. That's fantastic. As we close, how about Hong Kong? You've been living there for a long time. You like it? I definitely like Hong Kong. It's the place that I can see us staying there for quite a while. And it's a place that has a lot of opportunity. It's central to Asia. Well, thank you, Al, for all your insights. I think this is a great discussion we've having two public school graduates from Hawaii in the high-tech area. And I think that we can really bring more young people into this industry and make them succeed. And I think your insights gave them some really good things to think about. And I hope this will drive even more discussion and make people succeed, young people succeed in the future. Thank you very much. This is all about leadership on Think Tech Hawaii.