Las Vegas, NV - June 17th, 2001 -- High-tech is nothing if not risky - ask anyone who's been there and they'll agree. That was the consensus on the Sunday panel discussing the mandate for risk that defines a successful organization. Moderated by Lynda Kaye of Mango Communications, the panel was part of the day-long program for the Women in EDA Workshop and included panel members Kathleen Doler, Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Business, Deirdre Hanford, Senior Vice President for Synopsys, Wally Rhines, Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics, Penny Herscher, Chairman and CEO of Simplex Solutions, Nancy Nettleton, Manager of VLSI/ASIC Device Engineering at Sun Microsystems, and Gabriele Saucier, Chairman of the Board of the Design and Reuse Center. The diverse panel spanned EDA vendors, workstation vendors, IP promoters, and publishing and presented a surprisingly coherent message regarding the courage it takes to face the risks engendered by innovation.

Doler started with the manager's point of view, where risk often happens at a very personal level and often requires the "flip-side of consensus building." She said a daring leader must be decisive - frequently ignoring the popular opinions of direct reports - and must stop asking for help. She reminded the audience that "leading isn't a popularity contest." Similarly, the bold manager must encourage risk-taking in subordinates by providing incentives for creativity, delegating, and then refraining from micromanaging projects that have been handed off. In turn, the employee must be held to high standards of excellence and an expectation of timely delivery on projects. The group - manager and employees - must remember that embracing a culture of risk means accepting that failure is always a possibility; projects and organization must plan for failure each and every year. Most of all, success or failure, a risk-taking organization has to foster a sense of humor to keep everyone on an even keel.

Synopsys' Hanford said an organization has to keep its customers' risks and state of mind uppermost at all times. She challenged the audience to ask: What keeps my customers up at night? What can I do to help? Have I articulated my customers' challenges to my own company? She said, "As employees, we get so involved in the intramural politics of our own company that we often forget about our customers." Successful companies need to keep their focus on their customers' risks and the needs those customers face down in the trenches of product development.

Mentor's Rhines sorted out the confusion behind what constitutes high-risk versus low-risk corporate behavior. He argued that doing what everyone else is doing can actually constitute high-risk behavior - low risk may reside in the contrarian approach. He cited the example of Mentor's decision to let the rush to on-line-tool hosting pass them by. At the time, he said the company received a lot of negative press for ignoring the obvious revenue opportunities associated with the Internet. Now that the Internet bubble has passed, he said what appeared to be a high-risk decision has panned out to be the low-risk one. He added that large companies "generate a great deal of skepticism" about their ability to take risks and reap the rewards. But, he reminded his listeners that it's often "the lone wolf who gets crushed" and that realistic business decisions need to take that into account.

Simplex's Herscher said creative risk-taking builds on a diverse management team that spans gender, age, style, and personality types. She said her current team of direct reports includes a wild man and a conservative, plus a range of types in between. This mix of individuals leads to productive brainstorming and that's excellent for innovation. Hersher said leadership takes courage and the unending ability to endure sleepless nights when you're "shit-scared" about a decision you've made. And a tested leader has to accept the inevitable departure of a few direct reports along the way. The only way to get past all of these obstacles, she said, is to be well grounded in family, friends, and faith. Simplex's recent announcement of the X architecture - diagonal interconnects on-chip - required courage and coordination, but Herscher said that she believes promoting new ideas is always daunting at the outset.

Sun's Nettleton said that strategic partnering can be the biggest risk-taking exercise of all for a corporation. The company needs to identify partners who have a stake of equivalent value in a new venture. "If I take someone up on the high board with me and they're blind folded, they will be unprepared for the heights and the risks when they actually see where they are. They've got to know [from the beginning] where we are going and we need to agree in advance who is going to jump first." She said that relationships that can endure risks need to be built on trust and that communication has to be pervasive in all levels of the team.

D&R's Saucier threw in her perception of the European environment as a setting for risk taking. She said the Europeans lag behind Americans in that they think having a woman at the head of an organization constitutes risky behavior. Similarly, she thinks the European business community is more conservative about 'out of the box' thinking because there's a larger stigma associated with failure, should that be the end result.

Audience Q&A centered on rising above adversity when bold risk-taking turns to failure. The panelists agreed that it's important to strike a balance between conservative and extreme thinking. A portion of a business' resources must be committed to supporting existing product lines to protect revenue and legacy customers, but there must always be a commitment to high-risk high-reward initiatives as well - without exception. Koler said, "Successful companies continue to try to foster innovation even in difficult economic times." She added that no organization can tolerate a whiner. Herscher said, "I absolutely agree. I'm usually six months too late [in deciding to terminate a whiner]. A CEO can't move too fast to take the poison out of a team."