How the SIA Got Founded, by Wilf Corrigan

At the time the SIA was founded, in 1977, Corrigan was President and CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor, later he went on to found LSI Logic where he was Chairman and CEO for 25 years.

"When we founded the SIA, it was at a time of violent disagreements between the CEOs of the companies", recalls Corrigan, "then the Japanese came. It was like: 'The people from Mars have landed! We have to collaborate'."

"For the first meeting of the SIA, five or six of us (actually only four: Bob Noyce, Jerry Sanders, Charlie Sporck and Corrigan) met at Ming's (a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto). The question was who was going to be chairman and everyone looked at Noyce. He was the automatic choice," remembers Corrigan.

"Noyce said: 'I'll join, but I'm not going to be chairman'."

"None of the guys was going to let any of the others be the chairman," recalls Corrigan, "TI wasn't joining anything. Fred Bucy (TI's CEO at the time) wanted to take over everything. We decided we had to let Motorola in."

"So we all turned to Sanders and said: 'You should get John Welty at Motorola.'"

"Sanders said: 'I'm going to use the assumptive close.'"

"We all asked him: 'What's that?'."

"'I'm not going to ask him if he'll join", replied Sanders, "I want authorisation from you all to offer him the chairmanship of the organisation. I want to tell him: 'We've all looked at this, and think you're the right man to be chairman'."

"Welty went for it," concludes Corrigan, "so the question of whether Motorola should join or not never came up."