During his long and often innovative business career, William Norris, founder and chairman of Control Data, has gained a controversial reputation. To admirers he is the visionary who created a company that built the first supercomputers and quickly grew into a major force in the data-processing industry. To critics, Norris is a headstrong executive who has squandered corporate resources on well-intentioned but unprofitable social projects and stayed too long at the head of his now ailing firm.
Last week Norris, 74, decided it was finally time to step aside. At a board meeting at the firm's headquarters in suburban Minneapolis, he...
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