Innovation visit: ARM
Thursday 14 November 2002
Event hosted by Bill Parsons, Vice President of Human Resources.
During the visit on the 14th November CU Entrepreneurs members were given the chance to hear the ARM story, from Bill Parsons the VP of HR. The whole event was very interactive and highly informative. The interesting discussions during and after the presentation clearly reflected the desire to know more from an audience with a very clear business vision. Vice President ,Bill Parsons did an excellent job at keeping the audience happy and we would like to thank him for his time and efforts in making this innovation visit a great success. Below is a summary of some of the information discussed during the visit.
ARM licenses IP (Intellectual property) solutions that get used by most chip manufactures including Intel and Motorola. Most of these chips end up in everyday consumer products such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA). ARM started about 10 years ago when Robin Saxby (as he was then known) and 12 talented engineers from Acorn computer got together to provide solutions for Apple computers. Unlike all other chip designers, the team decided not to get involved with manufacturing but to license their designs. This licensing concept was brand new at the time. The company grew phenomenally year after year and only recently has this trend decelerated, though the longer term future still looks very bright. One of the key challenges faced by ARM is how to stop the company from becoming to bureaucratic. Maintaining an entrepreneurial culture is probably even more important, this was highlighted in a recent employees survey.
CU Entrepreneurs may be hosting other innovation visits so please keep an eye on your e-mail and the CU Entrepreneurs web site: www.cue.org.uk