Tech CEO turns to trusted adviser on key decision; 10-year old daughter
Anyone who thinks the word “executive” in CEO stands for a person who actually executes decisions and strategy should think again, at least according to Technicolor CEO Frederic Rose.
“It’s very funny, you get a job as a CEO and everyone says you’ve got this absolute power,” Rose told the Reuters Global Media Summit in Paris.
“The reality is, the power you have, the authority you have is to basically guide and to give direction…and if people don’t want to follow, they’ll just forget to do it,”
Rose said that since he took the helm of the video technology specialist in September 2008 he really only took one decision on his own — but if you want to get technical someone else helped him along.
“The only true executive decision that I have taken all by myself was the choice of the logo,” Rose said, showing Technicolor’s logo.
“We had 35 choices, I asked people around me and there was no plurality…not only did they go for the 35, they actually came up with other things. So I came home and dumped everything, my (ten-year-old) daughter Zoe took it, went into her bedroom, came back and said she chose this one and I said OK.”
Sometimes big decisions are not made in the board room.
Let’s Hear It for the Girls!
Our video games reporter Kemp Powers went to today’s Ubisoft press conference, which featured the usual array of gun play and sword fighting fans expected from the French video game publisher.
The company, however, saved some of its most enthusiastic chest-bumping for an update on its “Games for Girls” brand strategy.
Tony Key, Ubisoft’s senior vice president of sales and marketing laid out the impressive data; in the first three months of 2008, sales in the division aimed at “tween,” or pre-teen, girls grew 63 percent. Six of the top ten third party titles on the Nintendo DS are games targeted to the tween set.
And the number one third party title on the DS is Ubisoft’s own “Imagine,” a series of games that allows girls to pretend to be animal doctors, fashion designers, chefs and other professions and has sold more than four million units worldwide.
“You definitely cannot call them casual,” Key said of young girl gamers. “They’re playing and buying a lot of games.”
Which is why Ubisoft is expanding its girl games brand by rolling out a new line of “Imagine” titles between now and October that includes “Teacher,” “Interior Designer,” “Movie Star” and “Wedding Designer.”
We’re not sure how many little girls dream of planning other people’s weddings when they grow up, but obviously Ubisoft has done some focus group study and knows better than we would what professions today’s girls find interesting.
Really funny when us “little people” loose our jobs over a decision made by a 10 year old. I´m sick an tired of the attitude of the elite. Does this CEO really deserve his multimillion dollar salary if he can´t make decisions? Arent CEO´s supposed to be the “Decision Makers”.