How one CEO’s decision to turn down Steve Jobs led to epic consequences

A Fortune 500 CEO will make countless important decisions throughout their career, and any one of them might be their defining legacy.?

The former CEO of 英特尔 , Paul Otellini, for instance, turned down a request in 2006 from Apple’s Steve Jobs to produce specialized computer chips for the then-nonexistent iPhone.?

“There was a chip that they were interested in, that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more, and that price was below our forecasted cost,” Otellini told The Atlantic years later. “I couldn’t see it.”?

A deep dive into decision making, missed opportunities, and hard won successes, is at the heart of my colleague Geoff Colvin’s new story for Fortune. He explores the diverging fates of Intel and Microsoft—while they’re both still major players, one has clawed its way back to the top of the list of the world’s most valuable companies, the other has slipped to No. 69.?

It’s a tale of pitfalls that business leaders should watch out for, including failed acquisitions, an obsession to protect the existing business, and CEO succession errors. But it also highlights the kind of choices that led to some big victories, including the importance of changing the company culture, decisive action, and bringing in an outside leader who isn’t married to a particular strategy.?

You can read more here about the specific decisions made by CEOs at both tech companies over the years, and what others can learn from the case study.???

Leadership Tip of the Week ??

When the going gets tough, the tough make their executives work in the office six days a week. At least that’s what’s happening at Samsung in South Korea, as the company tries to inject a “sense of crisis” into its workers after performance expectations fell short.??

Leadership Next

E-commerce is a notoriously competitive landscape—but online pet retailer Chewy has managed to not just survive, but thrive. Since joining the company in 2018, CEO Sumit Singh has shepherded Chewy through its IPO in 2019 and its debut on the Fortune 500 list in 2021.

On this episode of #LeadershipNext, Singh talks about Chewy’s obsession with customer loyalty; his background in e-commerce and supply chain, with top leadership positions at 亚马逊 and Dell Technologies prior to joining Chewy; what he learned from Jeff Bezos; the company’s expansion into veterinary health care; and more. Plus—the guest and hosts have a chance to share a little bit about their own furry friends.

Listen to the episode and subscribe to Leadership Next wherever you listen to podcasts, or read the full transcript here.

Those are our biggest leadership stories of the week.

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-Azure Gilman, Fortune’s Deputy Leadership Editor (and the new writer of Learning to Lead)