GLOBAL TECH GURU: Andrew Black, of Bet Fair
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So far, Philips appears to be on top. McGregor says his firm has shipped about a billion RFID chips, far more than rivals like Texas Instruments. Philips started 10 years ago, selling rudimentary chips to European car companies as antitheft devices. When McGregor took over the semiconductor division three years ago, he identified RFID as a key profit center. His plan is working. A three-year sales slump seems to be over, and after a long string of losses, the 35 billion division has reported two consecutive profitable quarters. What's his secret? "Ease of use is in my blood," says McGregor. Of course, RFID won't approach $20 billion until several problems are resolved — prices have to fall and privacy concerns must be addressed. But its impact is already here — and it makes you wonder what McGregor will do for a hat trick.
Shigeki Ishizuka Sony | Japan
No one likes to have their boss looking over their shoulder. But Shigeki Ishizuka, the head of Sony's digital camera division, says he is unfazed whenever Shizuo Takashino — Sony's executive deputy president and one of the legendary team that created the Walkman — drops by. "I look forward to seeing him," Ishizuka says with a laugh, saying he is always prepared for Takashino's frequent suggestion to "make it smaller."
Ishizuka can get away with a jest; he's got cred all his own. Although many divisions within the Sony juggernaut have stumbled in recent years, Ishizuka has kept his department at the forefront of the exploding digital camera industry by introducing innovative, sexy products. Virtually nonexistent even a decade ago, the market for digital cameras grew to $17 billion in 2003, and sales are expected to soar by another 39% this year,
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Intriguingly, Sony is the only major digital camera maker without a traditional film background. Ishizuka, 45, considers that the company's greatest advantage. With no stake in the 35-mm camera market to protect, Sony was able to apply a fresh approach as consumers began switching to digital. The company's expertise in consumer electronics, video cameras and computers, and its emphasis on in-house design and development, he says, gave it an edge. "When you control every aspect of the parts design, and don't have to buy other companies' off-the-shelf components," Ishizuka says, "you can integrate the whole package much more tightly and elegantly — and often at lower cost," pointing to the pocket-sized DSC-T1 model in front of him as a perfect example.
In the spring of 2002, Ishizuka gathered his senior managers and declared that he was tired of incremental improvements. He wanted a radical leap: a camera roughly the size of a business-card case, but as capable as anything on the market. Cameras that size had been made before, he notes, but with sacrifices in image quality, screen size or zoom capability. "Our credo was: No compromises," Ishizuka says.
Tough talk, but not even Ishizuka realized just how high he had set the bar. Most of the camera's major components — including the battery, chipset and image processor — had to be designed from scratch. Engineers were sent back to the drawing board several times. The team's persistence paid off, however. When the camera (which features an impressive 5.1-megapixel resolution and a 2.5-in. LCD screen packed into an amazingly small body) went on sale in Japan in November 2003, it instantly became the nation's best seller — a phenomenon that has been repeated in virtually every market in which the camera has been introduced.