DOV FROHMAN LOOKING FOR UNANTICIPATED, RANDOM OPPORTUNITIES!

INTERVIEW & STORY BY CHERYL PRUSS

Many of you may remember retired VP Dov Frohman from when he managed Intel . His story, however, includes the horrors of , working at Fairchild with Moore, Noyce and Grove, inventing the EPROM, teaching in Ghana, authoring a book on leadership and more. Here is just a glimpse of his fascinating life.

THE EARLY YEARS rom the beginning, Dov Frohman has lived an eventful life. He F lost his parents to the holocaust, after they made sure he was safely hidden away by a Calvinist family in Holland. Later he spent time in orphanages for children whose parents had died in the war, before being adopted by relatives. Growing up in , he served in the Israeli army prior to starting his advanced education. After graduating with a degree in from the Technion, Dov traveled to the United States to study for his masters and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley in 1963, with it’s free speech movement and demonstrations, was an overwhelming experience and influence for a kid from Israel. In his book, Leadership the Hard Way, Dov summarized the impact this way: “What I learned at Berkeley is that unless you are prepared to see things differently and go against the current, you are unlikely to accomplish anything truly important. And to go against the current, you have to be something of an outsider, living on the edge, a member of a small but vibrant counterculture”.

After receiving his masters in 1965, he took a job in the R&D labs of . In 1969, after completing his Ph.D., he followed former Fairchild managers , , and to Intel Corporation, which they had founded the previous year. In 1970, Dov developed the concept for the EPROM while troubleshooting a failure in an early Intel product. The EPROM business remained one of Intel’s most profitable products well into the 80s and laid the ground work for .

Dov left Intel to teach Electrical Engineering in Ghana for about a year and a half. Dov’s purpose for going to Africa was to travel and learn, and support his interests through teaching. Every vacation, long or short he was on a trip somewhere else in Africa.

In 1974, Dov returned to Israel with a long term vision to develop a center for high tech research. He consulted with Intel to build a small chip design center in , while teaching at the School of Applied Sciences at Hebrew University. Dov was a very successful consultant to Intel which some assumed was due to friendship with Andy Grove. Actually, there was a strong friendship through numerous confrontations over the years, however people thought that Andy and Dov communicated regularly which was not the case. In 1985, after successfully negotiating on behalf of Intel for a semiconductor Fab plant in (Intel’s first Fab outside of the US), Dov rejoined Intel as the general manager of Intel Israel. He managed the plant through the first and kept it running as scud missiles rained down upon Israel. In the fifteen years from 1985 to Dov’s retirement in 2000 the site became a global center of excellence for Intel. A second fabrication plant was added in Qiryat Gat and the design center is responsible for designing the most advanced for Intel and is also the center for R&D for wireless technologies. The site currently employees more than 10,000 employees. Dov has received numerous awards honoring his scientific, technical, and business achievements over his career.

LEADERSHIP THE HARD WAY fter retiring from Intel, Dov who has been a pilot A for 26 years, was flying to Greece in his small plane and encountered a severe thunderstorm. He was flying with family and it was a life or death situation. He realized that the challenge of flying through a storm and surviving is an excellent analogy to leading an organization through a survival crisis. Concluding that he wanted to write a book about learning while doing and applying principles to leadership challenges in today’s turbulent world, he wrote Leadership the Hard Way over a two year period. Dov drew on his life experiences to create creative and counter intuitive principles of leadership. He concludes that leadership skills cannot be taught, but must be acquired by the leader through direct, personal interaction with the A brush with death… Pilong through a severe storm, turbulent environment of business in today’s world. inspired Dov to write Leadership the Hard Way. Dov shows how his life experiences helped him develop these principles (for example his invention of the EPROM made him see the principle of always being on the look-out for unanticipated, random opportunities) and how he applied those principles to create Intel Israel which has survived and thrived, in a highly volatile part of the world.

INTEREST IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION DEVELOPS fter getting his book published and talking to adult groups and business forums on the A importance of breakthrough thinking for a couple of years, Dov found adults were set in their ways and reluctant to change their thinking routine. While Dov was at his Italy home in the Dolomites, he had a chance to meet 3-5 year old kids and found them much more receptive than adults and they had a mind like a sponge in terms of creativity. From that experience, Dov developed the idea that successfully nurturing breakthrough thinking in early childhood, would result in kindergarten graduates becoming a revolutionary ‘Trojan Education Horse’ as they moved through school. The influence would continue its impact in working life and future leadership.

NOAH’S ARK INITIATIVE ov’s belief in early childhood education’s ability to help future generations to handle challenges, D led to his founding of the Noah’s Ark Initiative. The Noah’s Ark Initiative is an educational startup that strives to go beyond the boundaries of education in order to impact society as a whole. They focus the children’s education in the areas of Coping (Difficulty, Challenges and Successes), Thinking (Critical Thinking, Creativity and Curiosity) and Dialogue (Community, Interpersonal, Personal). Dov considers his role in Noah’s Ark Initiative as his social and personal obligation. It is a top priority for him. Not only did he found the initiative, but drives it with the intent of raising firm and flexible individuals who can shape and handle the challenges of the future, recognizing that our current model of growth and consumerism won’t last forever and new challenges will require new ways of thinking. The Noah’s Ark Initiative is a network of ‘lighthouse kindergartens’ that serve as a moral model for the entire community. The initiative will act like ‘an open-source’ community, encouraging educators worldwide to develop and share innovative educational methodologies and applications, with the aim of encouraging groundbreaking ways of thinking in kindergartens. Dov has partnered with Ran Cohen Harounoff, an education entrepreneur, who has experience in startups of schools, kindergartens and training programs for kindergarten teachers. The Noah’s Ark Initiative began its first involvement with a kindergarten in a disadvantaged neighborhood about 18 months ago. The focus is to start developing the kindergartens in Israel. As the Noah’s Ark Initiative learns, grows and increases involvement, the non-profit initiative would like to expand to other parts of the world. They are now involved in seven kindergartens, all in neighborhoods that are disadvantaged. Dov notes that a kindergarten class recently saw the kids decide to change the focus of their Dialogue session to Nap me at a kindergarten that Dov Community Relations (as the kids saw that as what they wanted to supports in Italy. do, in response to their environment).

IN HIS “SPARE TIME” ov divides his time between his home in Ein Karem,

D Jerusalem and a vacation home in the Dolomite mountains of Italy. He continues to enjoy skiing, bike riding and flying. He is married with two adult children. Dov’s involvement in the Noah’s Ark Initiative consumes the balance of his time. Dov left Intel feeling good about what he had accomplished. He doesn’t miss much about Intel; he just moved on to new challenges.

If you would like to communicate with Dov, his email address is: [email protected] If you would like to learn more, there is a lot written about Dov online. We referenced these online documents in the writing of this article and you will find a lot more detail about Dov, by looking at the following links. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_FrohmanA

Oral History of Dov Frohman - Computer History Museum : http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102702214 Enjoying the spectacular scenery (and the http://www.leadershipthehardway.com/index.html wine) of Lago Alleghe, near his home in the

Dolomites.