Dive In | Insights from Tech Industry Titan Marco Landi

In today's episode, I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with Marco Landi, a distinguished figure in the tech world. Mr. Landi is currently the president of Institut Europia, the host of the World AI Cannes Festival. But he has been the President of Texas Instruments, COO and President of Apple, and a Board Member of an impressive list of companies. It was an absolute honor to have a tech titan like him in the Lab.

We delved into his remarkable journey, starting with his pioneering thesis on digital technology in 1969 (the first in Italy), which catapulted him into a career that reshaped the tech landscape. Marco shared insights from his time at Texas Instruments, his transformative role at Apple, and his current mission at Institut Europea to champion artificial intelligence. His stories, filled with wisdom and a touch of humor, provide invaluable lessons on leadership, innovation, and the importance of staying curious and adaptable in a rapidly evolving industry. Join us for this enlightening conversation that bridges past achievements with future possibilities in technology.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tech Luminary Shares Career Insights
• 8:48 Leadership Through Curiosity and Determination
• 13:46 Transforming Enterprises Through Leadership and Vision

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, stem enthusiasts, welcome back to Cameron's Lab. Dive In, the go-to podcast for STEM students. Craft it with passion by one of your own. I'm Cameron, your enthusiastic and ever curious host. Buckle up for today's insightful episode. Ready to dive in and welcome back to Cameron's Lab Today. I am so honored to be joined by Mr Marco Landi. He is a tech luminary in the technology industry with a rich history. He started his career with a telecom and electrical and electronics engineering degree from the University of Belona and later an MBA from INSED. He is most significant or most well known for his impact with Texas Instruments and as Apple's COO. He was pivotal in their global operations, marketing and sales and was integral in reviving Apple's presence in EMEA Post-Apple. Mr Landi is now the President of Institute Europea, where I recently met him whilst traveling at the WAICF conference. So, mr Landi, thank you so much for joining me. I am excited to have you today.

Speaker 2: 1:08

My pleasure.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Thank you so much. So I wanted to start off with asking a little bit about the beginning of your career. So, as I mentioned, this podcast is mostly for students. I wanted to ask if you would, am I walking me through your time as a studying a master's for electronics and electrical engineering at university. So what was that like and how did it lead to you leading so many amazing tech companies?

Speaker 2: 1:31

You know, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's that you are there at the right moment. In 1969, when I started my thesis for the graduation at university, the teacher told me Mr Landi, you are quite an amazing guy. I want you to do something special on your thesis. You need to be a thesis on digital. And I said what is digital? At that time, everything was analogic. And I said I'm curious, why not, let's do this? So I had the chance and I think I also probably got that opportunity. I didn't leave it and I had the first thesis in Italy on digital 1969, which just was a rocket to launch me into this new world of digital world.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I think that's so exciting. Especially, I think it's you never know what the choice that you make can lead you to. So that's really exciting to know, and especially because you were the first to do it. So congratulations for that.

Speaker 2: 3:03

And you know what was interesting, the same teacher then, as he was a consultant to a larger telecom company, he told me come and work with this company that was developing the first digital transmission system in the world, 1970. And I was proud to say, wow, I am now developing the first digital transmission system using pulse code, the modulation. And one day one of the salesmen of Texas Instruments came proposing the new product that were digital products.

Speaker 2: 3:59

And I asked him because I did the thesis on this product some questions and he said sorry, I cannot answer. And I said wow, you are selling this product and you don't know how to answer. The day after he came with this boss and he proposed me to become a salesman for Texas Instruments. Initially I sensed like that he was offending me. I was an engineer, I am an engineer, I am creating, I am now developing the first digital transmission system and you want me to come and sell. And then he said how much are you gaining If we double your salary, if we give you a bonus on the sales, if we give you a company car? I said, oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2: 5:04

My first question was in the morning, do I need to sign up to get in and to be sure that I'm here at 8am, monday? He said no, you can get your breakfast, go to visit a customer, you make a report, you bring your customer for lunch. I'm coming and I started my 24 years experience with Texas.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Instruments. Wow, it's so amazing that you were right at the helm of all this new technology and then to have to do that transition must have been very difficult, so thank you for explaining that as well. I wanted to ask were there any challenges with that? So you mentioned like you're an engineer, because somebody's asking you go into the sales department and you're like, but I'm an engineer. So what kind of challenges did you face during those kind of transitions?

Speaker 2: 6:03

Overall Kameron, I discovered myself the heart of a salesman. And those talents were not only provided me by my mother in my body, but as a 12, as I wanted to continue my study, my mother and father, they were quite poor. They said sorry, we have no money to buy your books. And I said, okay, don't worry, I'm going to work. And I started selling shoes at 12 and I was able to maintain myself at school selling shoes. So the owner of the shop was teaching me how to sell. He was teaching me marketing. Looking at the women they were getting me don't spend time with this one. Look at the bad shoes that she has. Oh, this is very interesting. Make sure that you spend time with me.

Speaker 2: 7:23

So I learned already, since I was 12, what means sells but, particularly what means profit, and that helped me a lot in my career.

Speaker 1: 7:37

I was gonna say it all came full circle in the end. That's wonderful, but I wanted to ask you about next was that, like, as I mentioned before, you've worked with so many different companies, like I mentioned Texas Instruments, where you work for 24 years, apple Sky, now Institute European as a student, speaking to someone of your caliber, what advice would you have for students that are looking to make their own marks on the tech industry? So you said that you already started as sales into engineering and then went from there. What advice would you give to students that maybe feel that they don't have the skills necessarily, but maybe if you could give a bit of advice for someone that wants to make their mark on the industry, as you have?

Speaker 2: 8:17

First of all look inside yourself, because when you are in the market, when you are in any kind of situation, you are alone. It's difficult that someone comes and helps you. So you need first to look inside. What are your skills? Not everybody can become the president of Texas system or Apple computer. So what you think you can do and what you would like to do, have the vision of what you would like to do. But then be curious. Try to learn a year, read the day, travel, enlarge your horizon and then you decide what you want to do. And don't surrender if something happens, and then you may have a problem.

Speaker 1: 9:19

So insist, persist, determination, show your value and then the people will help you because the people want you to be with them. Amazing, thank you, sarah. Great advice, especially like the be curious. I feel like that really does assist, especially in the tech industry, that you're just constantly learning and things are constantly changing. If you're not curious, you want people to keep up.

Speaker 2: 9:43

Curiosity, curiosity. That's the reason why I made my success. I was always curious to learn more and even now, 80 years old, I am curious to learn, to read, to travel, to make sure that I enlarge my horizon.

Speaker 1: 10:09

And does that apply, I suppose, to your philosophy or your thoughts around leadership? Just being curious and constantly learning. Does that apply there as well?

Speaker 2: 10:19

You know, leadership is not something that you can teach. I know that many people have training, they have information, but leadership is something that is part of you. You need to discover it. You need to make sure, like a gold mine, that you go inside and you take out that gold, because the quantity of gold that you have inside you is up to you to take it out. But leadership is something that I see is part of your body, of your mind, of your intellectual. It's a other. You have it or you don't have it. If you have it, you need it to take it out and then you need to make sure that you prove it. But is a difficult job, is not easy, but it's a war between you and yourself. But if you win it, then you are a leader.

Speaker 1: 11:52

I like this idea. I'm. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit more about like decision making and when you're working in teams like that. So I'm you already mentioned like leadership can't really be taught, but when you're doing things like team management so for yourself, you know the big positions that you've had president, board member how do you lead other people like how do, how would you recommend leading teams? I think for us as students it starts off with like group projects and keeping everybody together, but on a bigger scale, like the ones that you have had to manage, how do you, how would you say that those skills transition over?

Speaker 2: 12:22

being in front of them, making sure that you set the example. Don't tell them do this, do that, do it yourself. First, share your vision, convince the people that that is the right vision. Make sure that you set the energy of everybody in the same line, from where you are to where you want to go, and make sure that there is a strong alignment of the vectors that each of the people reporting to you can contribute, because if one goes right, one girl left and other one goes up, the resulting force is weak. But if you put all of them aligned, because you have a set up, the visual and you are always in front of them and you set the example, they will follow and the resulting strength of that addition of forces is phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 13:41

You win really great. Thank you for this great advice. It actually does lead into what I wanted to actually about next, which was your time at TI instrument. So I saw that one of the one of the big achievements that I kept seeing when I was researching it was how you were able to take the Asian market for TI from one billion dollars in revenue to four billion dollars in revenue. So could you talk a little bit about that process? How did that feel? First of all, it must have been really exciting and proud of yourself. Of course, how would I say that? Those skills that you mentioned before of leadership, believing in yourself and keeping all of your team as a result in force did that help with that at all? Like how would that link into that wonderful success?

Speaker 2: 14:24

when I was appointed the president of Texas instrument Asia, based in Hong Kong, I had 14 people reporting to me, 14 people that were all expatriate, but people that were more interested to play golf and improve their handicap than do something for Texas instrument. So I had the end. I was a young. Versus all of them, I was the only known America.

Speaker 2: 15:03

I had to clean up one by one, all of them and put in every country a young, enthusiastic local men or woman, because they understood the transition that was necessary from having just a make market to a create market. We had to make a transformation from a place where we were producing to a real market where a customer were buying. But you had to create sales organization and only local people were able to really understand that and in every country I put one young local, loyal, also because it was my man and that that was my team.

Speaker 1: 16:14

I think does that help at all when you're like now so I already mentioned, you're the president for Institute Europea this knowledge that having somebody that's local and has the local knowledge does that help now while you're doing like all this wonderful AI, so like the AI, the robotics does having somebody with that local knowledge help with your teams now?

Speaker 2: 16:34

now is a totally different world. First of all, at that time, I had the the responsibility to bring orders. I had the people I had to report to and I had to perform. Now it's a different situation. Now, with Distitutoropia, it's my time to give back to the environment that helped me, something that I needed to recognize as a value. I am now with the objective to disseminate, to sensitize the people about the importance of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is going to change our world. It's impacting our humanity, our society, in ways that still we have not understood. But the sooner we understand the need to go and evaluate, understand the implication that our social, moral, religious, intellectual, the better we'll be. So now I'm on a missionary job to disseminate artificial intelligence and make sure that particularly young people understand the importance of artificial intelligence, or this new system that will impact considerably their life.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Thank you. If I could go back a little bit in your career before I launch into Distitutoropia, just a couple more questions about your time at Apple only, because that's one of the companies that I feel is really exciting as well and I wanted to ask you a bit more about your time there. So during your time at Apple, I wanted to ask if you had any insights that you've been able to apply to your career now. For example, I noticed that it was about 1997 when you had left Apple and, if you don't mind me saying so, that was the time when they went into a bankruptcy. So were there any insights and things that you learned from around that time that you maybe noticed and maybe bring into your career today?

Speaker 2: 19:09

Yes, I've learned at a very important lesson. When I joined Apple in 1994, in Europe, I was the president of Europe. The situation was very bad. We were losing money 300 million of dollars Just only in Europe. But in 12 months, with great leadership, great vision, great passion, I brought back 100 million profit. That's the reason why the board asked me to go to Cupertino and become the world president, the number two in the company.

Speaker 2: 19:56

But they fired the man that hired me and the situation was very difficult with the new guy that came. That was the CEO Guilamilio that, unfortunately, I didn't consider capable to have a vision to transform Apple for many, many reasons. And we reached the point in 1996 that with 2000 engineers we couldn't develop a new operating system. We had to go out in the market and search to buy or lease Apple a new operating system. But the destiny was there because we had three companies. The first one we discarded because they wanted too much money. The second thing in the list was Steve Jobs. And so we got back Steve Jobs in Apple 1997, with a vision, with a capability of understanding what to do, and it was so good that he understood that the entire team around the CEO was not good. They fired. They fired all of us, as I did in Asia.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Wow, it must have been such an experience.

Speaker 2: 21:43

But he also and this is what I learned. He was always saying vision, curiosity, enlarge your horizon.

Speaker 1: 21:54

And that just lines back up with what you were saying before having the curiosity to continue Same thing, wow. And then this is a more of a slightly exciting question for myself. I wanted to ask a little bit more about the technology that Apple has. So you mentioned that like looking for a new operating system. A lot of people say that Apple may have a bit like lost their creativity a little bit, but with the launch of the new Apple Vision Pro and things, it's kind of coming back a little bit. What would you say is your own opinion, if you don't mind.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Right now, Apple is still living under the vision of Steve Jobs. They made money with the telephone practically, but it's still the same. I have a day 14, you buy the 15, it's the same thing If I were there now I would put inside a virtual assistant. I don't need it to type. I would tell my virtual assistant hey, let's call it Siri, but I would see, like I see you Do this, do that, and the virtual assistant of my friends, my family, will share information.

Speaker 2: 23:21

We need this I mean we need to change these things too long Since 2007, when Steve Jobs launched it. Yeah, it's more performing, but it's the same. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2: 23:39

So the vision of Steve was so strong that, you see, apple is still no, it's not anymore the first, but it's the second, but it's losing ground. Microsoft, the eternal enemy, is number one now. So you need vision, you need to have that courage that Steve had, because his vision was changed the world. If he couldn't do it anymore with computer, he jumped the fence and he created the iPod and then the iPhone and then the iPod. He moved it into another unknown, uncharted territory with his vision. Today, apple Watch who use Apple Watch? So they needed to come out with something very innovative.

Speaker 2: 24:46

They talk about the new car we will see.

Speaker 1: 24:53

That actually it's great that you mentioned just being visionary and wanting to change the world, which seems a bit similar to what you mentioned before with the Institute of European, how you want to be able to change the world with AI. At least you see how AI is changing the world. So if you could tell me a bit more I guess a little bit again about how Institute of European is able to change the world of AI or at least bring it more to the focus, several things.

Speaker 2: 25:24

First, we have created the House of Artificial Intelligence, where we receive students from college, middle class 12, 11, 12, 13, and we try to introduce them into artificial intelligence, particularly women, because there is only 9% of women in artificial intelligence. This is very low. We need to put that at 30, 40% and the only way is to start early. That's the way we want to change. Second, we create different types of opportunities to present artificial intelligence in symposium, in conferences, for senior, large public. Understand to act. If they are afraid, artificial intelligence is not for me, that's not good, that's not correct. They need to understand.

Speaker 2: 26:41

Third, we create seminars for enterprises in order for the management of this enterprise to understand how to get into AI, Because anytime I give a conference, people come and say, hey, fantastic, but what should I do now? We teach them, we train them what to do, and then I have created this world AI competition in order really for Europe to wake up, because Europe is sleeping. We create a lot of good regulations, but where is the investment in artificial intelligence? And this is the other thing that we do article, symposium, seminar to tell the politics hey, we cannot continue this way. We don't want our young people to become employee of American or Chinese. Give them the opportunity to use their innovation, their vision, their creativity. Invest in artificial intelligence. Let's create what I say a good European plan for artificial intelligence. So you see a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 28:18

A lot of things, but a lot of necessary things as well.

Speaker 2: 28:22

Thank you Correct.

Speaker 1: 28:24

I wanted to ask because when I was at the WICF, I noticed that there was quite a bit of a focus on ethics in AI, which I think is really important right now. So I wanted to ask if you could explain a little bit more about why that's so important and then why also we need to focus on it a bit more.

Speaker 2: 28:41

But first of all, we needed to explain what is ethics in AI, because it's such a generic word that doesn't make any sense. So I'm trying to define it this way In three terms. First of all, needs to be inclusive. What means inclusive Can be developed? Must be developed by men, women, white, black, yellow. What we have seen with algorithms prepared only by white men a disaster. So inclusive. Second, sustainable Because we say AI, we use generative AI, a lot.

Speaker 2: 29:41

But the consumption of electricity is gigantic. Can we continue that way? Or we shouldn't think about how to reduce the consumption, because most of the data goes into some data center, but the consumption of electricity is gigantic. So we need to impose that all this is done with green energy Inclusive, sustainable and, third, responsible. What means responsible? That we know who has created the algorithm. We know what there is inside the algorithm. There must be transparency so that the people should know what they are buying, what they are using, inclusive, sustainable and responsible. This is AI.

Speaker 1: 30:50

I love that, thank you. That was definitely the first time, I think, that anyone has actually broken it down for me, so thank you. That's wonderful, for me at least to learn. I wanted to ask you, I guess, looking forward with WICF and Institute, where do you see it going and what are some of the critical developments that you're looking forward to?

Speaker 2: 31:11

I have a vision I want to do the World AI Festival, the Davos of AI. That's my vision, but not only looking at the business. I want there people that start understanding, discussing the implication on our society of artificial intelligence.

Speaker 2: 31:43

There are moral, social, intellectual, religious, For example. Just to tell you something we know that in the next five years many people will lose their jobs and we say new jobs will be created, but not immediately. What do we do with these people? And we have already a good example. I don't know if you follow what's happening in the European Commission, that they have created some directive for the ecology, the Green Deal, but they have put so many regulations and the implication of this in agriculture is such that the people in agriculture cannot sustain it anymore. So they are now on the street fighting against that, and I see that artificial intelligence is going to create the same thing.

Speaker 2: 33:01

So we need to start thinking now what are the implications? And not when the problem will be there, but before that. That's the reason I want to create a discussion, a symposium, not just on your business with the people that are into the artificial intelligence, but the people that can really understand intellectual psychologists, religious people. What are the implications?

Speaker 1: 33:39

of AI in our society now as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Thank you so much for your time, mr Landy. I've given you a lot to think about and hopefully a lot to my listeners to think about as well. So thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Hi again, awesome listener. That wraps up another deep dive of Cameron's Lab. Dive in. Before you dive back into your day, take a second to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Want to behind the scenes, look Bonus content or just some good old STEM fun? Follow me on my socials Instagram, tiktok and YouTube at Cameron's Lab and remember every episode of a new adventure and we've got some really good dive lined up for you. Don't miss out Until next time. Stay curious and keep it for.