Key Courses advocated by Management Bestsellers in the 1980s Looking for excellence Leaders are advised to “stay knitting” and stay “connected only with the businesses you know best.” This isolation may undermine the adaptability of a generation ago and is certainly not the wisdom of the AI generation. Two weeks ago Nvidia Founder Jensen Huang revealed to 175 top CEOs across the industry how he abandoned his business plan, and instead drew twice, twice from disruptive new advances in the technology field and from the model of his idol Michael Dell.
Huang’s idol has to praise the performance of NVIDIA CEO, leading the organization to the forefront of global business. Dell is one of the industry giants who join our 154th Yale CEO Leadership Institute CEO Forum to discuss how they manage strategic innovations as AI continues to grow rapidly.
“Jensen and Nvidia – not an understatement – they are driving the most important change that is happening in the world right now,” Dell said.
To end the event, Dell and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna presented Huang with the “Legend of Leadership” award for his unparalleled success.
But the recognition that people often receive is the root of Huang’s achievements: his ability to adapt and his ability to continue to lead even after his victory. Our interaction with him quickly reveals how unique his leader is.
Make a new start everyday priorities
In the 1980s, Intel Co-founder Andy Grove warned that “only paranoids can survive”, which shows a key turning point in strategic decision-making. Now, Huang said, this fluid mentality is every day rather than plot. Fight against it now Microsoft Since launching Chatgpt in November 2022, NVIDIA shares have won the title of the world’s most valuable company based on market value, and NVIDIA shares have nearly ten times the price. $27 billion Expired in fiscal year 2023 $130 billion In fiscal 2025, driven by unprecedented demand for accelerated computing and AI.
Benioff describes Huang as a prophecy that “the future of Nvidia and the future of our industry will be AI.” He added: “No one can see…it’s visual. It’s clear. It’s purposeful. (Jansen) is incredible.”
Since Huang co-founded NVIDIA in 1993, the company has been working tirelessly to promote computing. Its first major success was in the case of revolutionizing the graphics processing unit (GPU) in the gaming industry to improve computer graphics. This laid the foundation for modern AI and led the organization to ultimately power many of the world’s AI factories and infrastructure, industry, technology and social aspects of rewiring.
As Huang told leaders at the CEO Summit, NVIDIA’s establishment is a counter-trend view on “reshaping computers.” Huang and his co-founders believe that instead of replacing general computing as many purposes, they are intended to replace general computing. “We’re right,” he quipped modestly. Gambling pays off, allowing chip makers lead In GPU.
Then, 15 years later, in 2010, NVIDIA rotated after discovering that its CUDA programming model could be adapted to solve deep learning problems. “The great observations we make are…the deep learning approaches are fairly common,” Huang continued. “We imagine what would happen if we were to extend this problem and ultimately imagine if learning was not needed, we could discover that every data had to be marked as human.”
NVIDIA and AI Reimagining –
He didn’t stop there. Eight years later, Nvidia was adapted again. As he told us, the last “Great Observation” and his team made it was “AI is really a whole new industry.” It’s an industry that could “change every industry… like electricity… that’s a lot of aspects of me here.”
Reflecting on his success, Huang shared where he and Nvidia have come to today: “We have the courage to gradually solve problems and reshape everything in our company and everything about how we calculate.”
But perhaps Huang’s most admirable attribute is his humility. He started his remarks by thanking Benioff, Krishna and Dell for presenting his award, calling them “my heroes.” In his comments, he consistently praised the co-founder and team of NVIDIA. He once again paid tribute to his three awards ceremony in honor of their “having played a major role in shaping the computer industry we know today.”
Successful leaders like Huang rarely adapt seamlessly, effectively through disruption times and openly recognize the contributions of other industry giants who stand out before them.
IBM’s Krishna reflects on Huang’s hub, saying to the gathered CEO: “It keeps the entire company away from (their) money…it’s taking courage beyond vision…it’s only he has the perseverance, perseverance, perseverance and glory to be able to get there.”
The success of NVIDIA CEO shows that it is time to abandon the management spell of the 1980s. The baseball philosopher coach warned at the time: “The future is not what the past is!”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is Leicester Crown Professor in Management Practice in Lester and founder and founder of Yale CEO Leadership Institute. Stephen Henriques is a senior fellow at Yale CEO Leadership Institute and a former consultant to McKinsey & Co.
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