AMD公司華人女CEO 不想活在他人的陰影下

Last October, Lisa Su became the first female leader of a major semiconductor company. As Advanced Micro Devices AMD 1.16% new CEO, the long-time technologist also became one of the 25 women CEOs in the Fortune 500. She has since spent the past few months trying to get the company—which, like larger rival Intel, has suffered from slumping PC sales—back on a path of profitable growth. To explain how she plans to do that (and to share her thoughts on breaking the glass ceiling at AMD and her passion for gaming), Su sat down for an exclusive interview with Fortune this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

去年十月，蘇姿豐成爲一家大型半導體公司的首位女性掌門人。作爲超威半導體（AMD）的新CEO，這位經驗豐富的技術專家也由此成爲《財富》500強企業中僅有的25名女性CEO之一。過去幾個月，她一直試圖令超威重返盈利軌道，因爲超威像英特爾一樣，近來也遭受了PC銷量下滑的衝擊。上週，蘇姿豐在拉斯維加斯的CES展上接受了《財富》的獨家專訪，詳解了她的公司復興計劃，她對自己在超威打破女性職業晉升瓶頸的看法，以及她對遊戲的熱情。

Edited excerpts:

以下是經過編輯的採訪摘要：

FORTUNE: You’re a few months in to the job now. What do you hope to do, and what’s the plan?

《財富》：你上任已經幾個月了。你打算做些什麼？你的計劃是什麼？

Lisa Su:It’s been just about 90 days, and it’s been fabulous. I have been with the company for a couple of years and in the semiconductor industry for over 20 years. It is incredibly fun to run a company like AMD. I’ve spent most of the last quarter on the road. So that’s a lot of time with customers and partners and employees. The most interesting thing is just talking about the technology and why it’s exciting and important and we’re going with it. I grew up as a technology geek, and now I get to live the part for real.

蘇姿豐：差不多90天了，感覺非常好。我已經在這家公司工作幾年了，在半導體行業也已經摸爬滾打了20多年。運營像超威這樣一家公司是非常有意思的。上個季度的大部分時間，我都在路上，花了很多時間見客戶、合作伙伴和員工。最有意思的事就是討論技術，它爲什麼令人興奮，爲什麼重要，我們爲什麼要做它。我從小就是個“極客”，而現在它成了我的生活。

Semiconductors have always been my background, so building chips and seeing the product of our designs go into devices is really cool for me. I think the vision that I’m trying to establish for AMD is that we are a company with technology that’s really, really leading edge, and we’re going into the most important applications over the next five years. So 50 billion devices will be connected together and there will be all different types of devices. You’ll have PCs and cars and more, and all of them need computing and visualization. That’s what we do.

我的背景一直是半導體，所以我覺得，生產芯片、看着我們設計的產品進入電子設備，是一件很酷的事。我認爲我想爲超威建立的願景就是，我們是一家技術非常先進的公司，而且我們要做的正是未來五年裏應用最廣的東西。未來聯網的設備將達到500億臺，而且也將會有各種不同的設備。比如說，你的PC和汽車都需要計算和虛擬化。那就是我們要做的事情。

How can you differentiate the company going forward?

展望未來，你如何讓這家公司實現差異化？

Diversifying the business is definitely a good thing. But for me, it’s really about product applications and what we can enable and inspire. I think AMD is at our best when we’re working with a customer and allowing them to do something they couldn’t do before. That is not the history of the company—the history of the company is that we’ve been second source to other people. I think we really need to change that, that’s the nugget I’d like to change. Two years from now if we’re sitting here, you should be thinking, “Hey, these are all the cool things that AMD is in”—not that AMD is a second source to somebody else.

讓業務多樣化絕對是一件好事。但在我看來，更重要的是產品的應用，以及我們能夠促成什麼、啓發什麼。我認爲超威正處於最好的時期，因爲我們能讓客戶做一些以前做不了的事情。那並不是公司的歷史——我們過去一直被很多人視爲第二選擇。我認爲我們確實需要改變這一點。兩年後如果我再坐在這裏，你應該會想：“嘿，這麼多非常酷的東西都有超威參與。”到那時，超威將不再是位於其它公司之後的第二選擇。

So what kind of cool things, for example?

你們正在參與開發哪些非常酷的產品，能舉個例子嗎？

Like the iMac 5K display. It has all of the technology that we can pack and graphics and visualization in a beautiful form factor. Also game consoles—that’s really a product that enables so much. I happen to have lots of game consoles in my house, and for our holiday party we did Just Dance [a “rhythm game” developed and published by Ubisoft]. It’s not a fighter game, but it’s a different way of socializing and bringing technology to the forefront. I think that’s what I’d like AMD to be known for—you know, we bring cool applications to the market.

比如iMac 5K顯示器。它集成了我們現有的全部技術，還有圖形和虛擬化等等，而且外形也很漂亮。此外還有遊戲機，它是一個具有很大潛能的產品。我家裏就有很多遊戲機，在家裏開假日派對的時候，我們就會玩《舞力全開》（一款由Ubisoft公司開發的“旋律遊戲”）。它不是一個對戰遊戲，而是一種全新的社交方式，而且把科技推到了前沿。我想這就是我希望超威能夠享有的聲譽——你知道，我們會把很酷的應用推向市場。

You’ve been in the industry for a long time. How has it changed? There seems to be a changing of the guard at a lot of companies at the moment and rapid technology changes.

你進入這個行業已經很長時間了，它有什麼變化嗎？目前似乎有許多公司都更換了掌門人，而且技術變革的速度也非常快。

The pace of change has increased. It’s not measured on years anymore; you can actually see it in a shorter time scale. Putting management changes aside—because every company has management changes and that’s not necessarily the primary factor—the market is changing and it’s because the technology is changing so fast. If you think about the period of time between when we went from PCs being the center of the universe to smartphones to tablets to now, where it’s not any one of those things but really a collection of hundreds of devices that have become important, I think it’s really because those changes have accelerated that it causes us as technology people to be much smarter or more predictive of what has to happen. Because when we make an investment in technology today it will take us three years to see if it will pay off. So we have to be predicting what will happen three years from now.

變革的速度已經加快了。它不再是按年來計算，你可以在更短的時間週期看到變革。先把管理層更換放在一邊——因爲每家公司都有管理層變革，那未必是一個主要因素。市場也在發生變化，因爲技術的變革實在太快了。想想我們從PC過渡到智能手機和平板電腦再到現在所用的時間，特別是現在這些東西中沒有任何一項佔統治地位，而是幾百種設備都變得很重要，我想這的確是因爲這些變化已經加速，它使我們這些搞科技的人變得更聰明瞭，或者更能預見到下一步會發生什麼。因爲如果我們今天做出一項技術投資，三年就可以見到效果。所以我們必須能夠預測三年後會發生什麼。

I joke about this but a lot of people ask me why AMD isn’t in smartphones. I say, “That’s an interesting question but you should have asked me that three years ago.” What you should be asking me today is what’s going to be important three years from now. That’s the part of our industry that I think makes it so interesting to be in, because the important money is what are we investing in in the future.

我曾開玩笑地說起這一點，但很多人問我，爲什麼超威沒有進入智能手機行業。我說：“這是一個很有意思的問題，但你應該在三年前問我。”你今天問我的問題應該是三年以後什麼最重要。這正是爲什麼我覺得這個行業非常有意思，因爲重要的是我們未來要投資什麼。

But there’s still a lot of money in mobile. Was the decision not to be there a mistake?

但目前還是有很多資金投在了移動上，沒有進入移動領域是不是一個錯誤？

I think the decision was one that was made three years ago. And I view it as, you have to play to your strengths. There are a lot of phones that are going to be sold and that’s good. But our strengths are in computing and visualization. So playing to our strengths is key.

我想這個決定是三年前做出來的。我認爲我們必須揚長避短。雖然賣出去的手機的確很多，這也很好，但我們的優勢在於計算和虛擬化，所以發揮優勢很關鍵。

AMD is in two very large markets [PCs and gaming] but not dominant in either. Is that a problem?

超威同時在兩個非常大的市場裏博弈（PC和遊戲），但沒有主宰其中任何一個。這是不是一個問題？

The way I think about it is that I would probably define the markets differently as we go forward. The market is going to be defined by those 50 billion connected devices. So the question is does it end up being that there’s a set of applications where different technologies are satisfying different applications. I think AMD has a set of technologies that can service a broad number of those applications. It’s different than if we’re talking about microscopic changes on a quarterly basis. There you tend to get into who lost and gained a percentage point of market share.

我對這個問題的看法是，隨着公司的進一步發展，我可能會對市場做不同的定義。未來市場將由那500億臺聯網設備來定義。所以問題是，未來會不會演變成有很多的應用，需要各種不同的技術滿足不同的應用。我認爲超威就有一系列不同的技術，可以滿足大量應用。它與那種按季度衡量的“小步快走”的變革是不同的。在後者的語境中，你可能會更關注誰贏誰輸，或者佔了多少市場份額。

So you’re saying that who’s going to be dominant could be different because the market categories could be different?

所以你是說，市場的主宰者可能會變，因爲市場類別本身可能會變？

Yes. I firmly believe that the innovation in computing is still really in its infancy. As good as our phone is today, the speech recognition and the face recognition isn’t very good today. So there’s still plenty of innovation to be had.

是的。我堅信計算領域的創新仍然處於早期階段。雖然現在你的手機已經挺不錯了，但語音識別和麪部識別功能仍然不是很好。所以還有很多的創新要做。

Is running this company something you always aspired to do?

執掌這家公司是不是你一直渴望做的事情？

It’s definitely something I aspired to do. I went to school at MIT with a whole bunch of engineers. And then I started work one day and asked myself, “why do all of these MIT Ph.D.s work for Harvard MBAs?” Why should it be like that? I was one of those engineers who thought, “Why are these people making those dumb decisions?” So it’s fun to be the person making them. This is a fantastic opportunity.

當然這是我一直渴望的。我在麻省理工學院的很多同學都是工程師。然後有一天我開始工作了，我問自己：“爲什麼這麼多麻省理工的博士要給哈佛的MBA打工？”爲什麼會是這樣？另外很多工程師包括我自己都會想：“爲什麼這些人做的決策這麼蠢？”所以自己去當決策人是挺有意思的，這是一個非常美妙的機會。

You’re also the first woman to run a major semiconductor company.

你也是第一個執掌一家大型半導體公司的女性。

I’ve heard that.

我聽說了。

Is that a significant milestone to you?

這對你是一個重大的里程碑嗎？

I think I’m honored by it. I’m honored more by the fact that if you had asked me what I want to be when I grew up, it would have been pretty much here. Just 90 days into a job it’s hard to talk about legacy, but what’s more important to me is that when you grade AMD, whether it’s three years from now or five years from now, you grade it on that this was a fantastic set of assets that she turned into something special. That would be a phenomenal grade to have. So that’s more important than do I happen to be the first [woman] today.

我覺得很光榮。這是因爲如果你在我小時候問我，長大了想當什麼，我的答案很可能就是這樣一份工作。現在我上任剛剛90天，還談不上能帶給這家公司多大的影響。但當你在三年或五年以後評價超威時，如果你覺得這位CEO帶來了一些特別的東西，留下了一筆很出色的資產，我就會覺得那是一個很不尋常的評價。那比我現在是不是第一位女性CEO要重要得多。（財富中文網）