The Hi Tech Interview--Winbond Electronics in San Francisco

Winbond Electronics Corp. was founded in 1987 in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan and has been publicly traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (stock code: 2344) since 1995. Winbond owns the capabilities of both IC design and manufacturing and provides entire solutions to the customers. Winbond focuses on the developments of four main product lines, including μC & μC-based Consumer IC, Computer Logic IC, Mobile RAM, and Flash Memory, and it has built a solid foundation and a strong reputation in the semiconductor industry.

Velyn Sia, Marketing Operations Manager for Winbond in San Francisco gave me a good answer after I asked him what he was going to do as a decision maker at his company to ride out these tough economic times."

Cash is king and so during these difficult economic times, the best thing for companies is to have cash reserves on hand to help them ride the wave. However, not all companies have the luxury of a stockpile of cash. In such instances, companies need to be creative and think out of the box.

I remember reading a book about Matsushita and how the CEO at the time had the difficult task of navigating the company through economic hard times. During that period, a majority of his peers in other companies were laying off employees as a cost cutting measure. However, the CEO at Matsushita decided on a different approach. He gathered all the employees of the company together and told them that he would not lay off anyone but that people would have to take pay cuts (himself included).

He also encouraged everyone (no matter what their role in the company) to help sell the company's products to generate revenues for the company and therefore their own paychecks. Amazingly, during that period, Matsushita actually generated revenue growth while his competitors continued to experience revenue declines. This was definitely one example of a visionary leader who thought out of the box and saw beyond the "pennies" you could save by laying off employees.

Sometimes, layoffs are inevitable but some times the key to riding an economic downturn is find ways to generate revenue growth instead of minimizing costs.