The 14th Marketors Lecture

From Start-up to Global Standard and Beyond - Some practical lessons

Thursday, 1 November, 2007

An audience of city practitioners, marketing professionals and students gathered recently at Cass to hear how Sir Robin Saxby took ARM Holding Plc from 12 engineers to world leadership. In only 17 years ARM has achieved a market capitalisation of £2 billion, with 1,700 people across the globe in 34 locations.

The development of the microchip has been the driving force behind the success of ARM Holdings and Sir Robin began his presentation with a potted history of microchip development and explained that investment, talented engineers, a clear aim to become "the global standard", and an ability to harness the growth potential of their sector has enabled ARM Holdings to become the world's leading microchip manufacturer.  

Sir Robin emphasised the importance of sales and marketing as not just an important function of the business but an essential skill for every employee. The talent of, ‘the founding twelve’ was in engineering and one of the initial aims of ARM was to develop their sales and marketing skills. “It is the ability to find the right mix of sales, engineering, marketing and finance experts as well as gearing the business towards, market pull rather than technology push, that has led to ARM Holdings success.” Sir Robin emphasised this customer focus in his conclusion by stating, "opportunity comes from fitting technology to explicit customer needs."

Professor Malcolm Gillies, Vice Chancellor, City University, was in attendance and commented: "Sir Robin Saxby was a fantastic and engaging speaker – the very model of the British, now global, entrepreneur. The University was delighted to collaborate with the Worshipful Company of Marketors and the Chartered Institute of Marketing in a cutting edge demonstration of knowledge transfer."

Sir Robin Saxby