Intel CAO Recalls Tiny Flaw Making Big Waves

Andy Bryant told Spring CRO Conference guests about embracing corporate culture in an era of potential Internet infamy

By Dennis Schaal

Being a good corporate citizen can be a combative and transformative endeavor and nearly 300 advocates of the art form gathered at the Spring CRO Conference at the Union League Club in Manhattan March 27 to hear corporate responsibility veterans relay their war stories, advice and battle plans for sustaining the drive.

In his morning keynote address, Andy Bryant, Intel’s Chief Administrative Officer, said the chip maker’s goal has been to create a corporate responsibility culture.

“To build a culture is hard work that never ends,” Bryant said. “You can’t do it with a PowerPoint presentation.”

Intel, which took top honors in the CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008 ranking, constantly must set strategy and make a business case for initiatives, balancing the desires of competing stakeholders, Bryant said.

For example, Bryant recalled the flak that Intel received from some shareholders who didn’t see the need for the company to spend millions of dollars annually on Intel Teach to the Future, a global program that has trained millions of teachers in techniques to integrate technology into their classroom instruction.

Bryant said he had to explain to some shareholders that the program is “not a quid pro quo investment” with an immediate return, but that Intel would have been shortsighted if it didn’t view the training program as integral to its business.

On the way to its No. 1 ranking on CRO’s 2008 100 Best list, Intel experienced some growing pains that were encapsulated in the company’s introduction of a Pentium chip in 1993, Bryant recalls.

In 1994, with the chip on the market, a bug was discovered: In a very small number of cases, the Pentium chip produced division errors when PC users performed calculations, Bryant said.

Bryant explained that Intel at that time had not shed its roots as “a small electronics company,” and ignored the flaw. “It seemed, at first, barely worth our attention,” he said.

But after Intel’s largest customer, IBM, halted shipments of PCs with the Intel chip, the national media picked up the story, and the Pentium chip became the butt of Internet jokes, Intel’s views changed. The company offered to replace the chips, and eventually took a $457 million charge against earnings for the damage.

“Corporate responsibility meant treating these issues with the utmost seriousness,” Bryant said.