Robert Galvin, Paul’s son, became CEO in 1959 when his father died, and for nearly four decades, Robert was Motorola. He guided the company into the jet, space, computer and wireless ages. (Astronaut Neil Armstrong described his first steps via a Motorola transponder.) In 1974, when Motorola produced its first microprocessor, the company sold its declining television business and boldly plowed the proceeds into semiconductor and wireless telephone research. Over the next decade, the company spent $100 million developing cellular phones, selling its first—a 28-ounce giant—in 1984.
For the past 60 years, the Galvins
were always willing to be judged on
their performance. In today’s
climate, however, the window
to prove oneself has narrowed
considerably—no matter whose
DNA one carries. |
By the time Robert Galvin stepped down as chairman of the board in 1990, Motorola was a highly respected global technology titan. But the transition to the third generation was hardly seamless. The heir-apparent to Robert Galvin was not his son, Chris, who had joined the company full-time in 1973, but George Fisher. Still, the younger Galvin continued to work his way up through the company’s paging division before assuming more senior posts. And in 1993, when Fisher resigned to head up Eastman Kodak, the coast was left clear. In 1997, Chris Galvin was named CEO.
Unfortunately, Chris was a victim of bad timing and poor execution. Motorola’s status as the global leader in both cell phones and pagers made it a huge target for competitors, and hence vulnerable to swift changes in the marketplace. Motorola failed to adequately prepare for the paradigm shift from analog to digital, and its engineering-dominated culture proved ill-equipped to address the evolution of once-clunky cell phones into trendy fashion statements. Meanwhile, the company’s massive investment in Iridium (a satellite-based global phone service) soured; Iridium went bankrupt in 2000. And while the company phased out products, such as car radios and pagers, whose greatest era of growth had passed it stubbornly held onto its semiconductor business, where profits continued to dwindle. Though Galvin essayed to confront these challenges by restructuring, cutting the 140,000-person workforce sharply, and engineering a 2000 merger with General Instrument, he lacked his father and grandfather’s commanding presence—as well as their credibility. The company continually disappointed Wall Street expectations, and in one interview, Chris uncouthly bristled at the suggestion that he had risen to his position by virtue of genes rather than talent: "Where’s the evidence that the board engaged in nepotism?"
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