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Qualcomm Founder Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs

„It took us 9 years to enter the chinese market“

30. Mai 2018, 12:58 Uhr | Frank Riemenschneider

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Fortsetzung des Artikels von Teil 2

„My wife and myself setup an innovation institute at a ‚less standard university‘“

DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK: Which educational projects are you supporting in particular?

Dr. Jacobs: As you know I am supporting UCSD (University of California San Diego) and MIT, where I was teaching, as well as others for a long time. The latest project I’m supporting for a few years is located in New York. The city provided some land on Roosevelt Island (editors note: located between Manhattan and the Bronx), 100 Mio. Dollars and other support for launching a new kind of university, from which students should start new businesses. My wife and myself setup an innovation institute there. We will see how this „less standard university“ will do, it had a very strong start for sure.

DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK: Another issue is using technology in education. Do you agree?

Dr. Jacobs: Absolutely. The issue are the high costs even on the universities, where the students come out with high bills they can’t pay. One possibility is a four year program, in the first year students come to the universities, do their research and connect to other students. The next to years are virtual, in the final year they are coming back, doing their networking and their final research. It looks extreme, but I think some of these experiments could work well.

DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK: In the younger past some unfortunate events occured at Qualcomm, the Broadcom battle, the Apple lawsuites, the financial panalties imposed by several governments, do you see your heritage damaged in any way?

Dr. Jacobs: Well, it worries me! Some of that was foreseeable, I gave some advise on it some years ago. But as this time other people were running the company, and in this case they didn’t follow the advise. But this a separate issue.

Qualcomm was always built on innovation, getting enough results to continue to grow. The licensing model allowed others to do less R&D but take benefit from which are are doing, putting into Chips and Software. This was a good model. What concerns me is to make sure that this model continues. It was motivating everybody to be innovate. If you have a look on some of the new business plans, you may begin to worry that the opposite impact could happen. So my hope is that Qualcomm will continue to be an innovate company, to take chances and to take risks, because you will get chances only when you also take risks, and finally to make enough profit to continue to grow.

DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK: If I understand you right, you would have been happy if the actual Qualcomm management would have followed your advise…

Dr. Jacobs: Yes, of course I can’t disclose the details (laughing)

DESIGN&ELEKTRONIK: Unfortunately your younger son Paul[4] is not longer chairman of the board, but has even removed from the board by huge investment companies. If you have a look on the future, which kind of company will Qualcomm be in 3 or 5 years?

Dr. Jacobs: Well, I think that is still beeing shaped. As you know they are trying to aquire a big company (NXP, editors note). In the past Qualcomm grew mostly internally, we aquired just a few companies, which were very neighbouring technologies rather than competing ones, but always driven from building ourselves. So this is a new change, if it gos through in China you have to make sure that these two companies are performing better together than apart. I think that can be done, I’m hopeful, because there is a whole range of new areas to go into, but this will be a bit of a battle. My hope is that Qualcomm and the combined company will continue to press on innovation approaches, thinking about better ways doing thinks and will continue to lead the industry.

They could more fallback to generate more cash, to satisfy the shareholders, and to do the ordinary things like financial engineering. My preference is the real engineering (laughing).