Word: fairchild
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...Fairchild is a prodigious reader who subscribes to more than 200 technical and general publications, tears out articles, jots notations on them and shoots them off to officials of his companies. He dictates a steady stream of letters (about 80 over a normal weekend) into tape recorders scattered through the house, has them typed by secretaries working in two shifts in a basement office...
...Nerve. "I'd still like to invent the products," says Fairchild, "but the business has become too big for that." Fairchild believes that it is not enough simply to develop a product that is slightly better than a competitor's. He had no interest in bringing out a movie camera that was only an improvement on cameras on the market. But when his re searchers came to him with the idea of a home movie sound camera, he gave en thusiastic approval. "Fellows from the camera company came to see me and said they could produce...
...Although Fairchild is chairman of all his companies, he prefers his role of technical adviser. "If things are going well," he says, "I do not butt in. My forte is not management. But when things don't go well, I butt in." Fairchild Camera was showing few signs of growth in 1957 when Fairchild himself stepped in to run the company, "to the consternation of a good many people." But Fairchild brought in hard-driving President John Carter, 40 (with the lure of an option deal that could net him, at current prices, about $8,000,000), now gives...
...Fairchild relishes such independence-so long as it gets results. He also thinks that "every growth situation has two elements of leverage-not only the growth of the company itself, but the ability to pick up other companies that have not realized their possibilities." Last month Fairchild Camera gave final approval to a merger with DuMont Laboratories (1959 sales: $19 million), which makes TV tubes and products in other fields where Fairchild wants to expand...
...Fairchild realizes that not every company can be a growth company. One of his own, Fairchild Engine & Airplane (1959 sales: $114 million), is in an industry "without growth possibilities." Fairchild Engine suffered from the cancellation of the Goose missile, and its F-27 turboprop transports have not sold well to feeder lines. Fairchild hopes to branch out into new products, feels that "every business has something in it that has growth, even if the business as a whole does not." One new development that could help his company: the USD-5, an unmanned electric-eye drone capable of flying over...