How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s success doesn’t trust certain leadership advice
Important lessons proposed in management bestsellers in the 1980s In search of excellence Advise leaders to “stick to your knitting” and remain “only with the businesses you know best.” That isolation may have undermined adaptability before the generation, and certainly not the wisdom of the AI generation. Two weeks ago, nvidia Founder Jensen Fan has revealed to 175 top CEOs across the industry how he dumped his business plan not once, but twice, to adopt the disruptive new advancements in the frontier of technology, based on the model of his idol model Michael Dell.
And Huang’s idols were forced to praise Nvidia’s CEO for his performance that led the organization to the forefront of global business. Dell joined us at the CEO forum of the 154th Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute and was one of the industry’s Titans to discuss how to manage strategic innovation as AI continues to evolve quickly.
“Jensen and Navidia say this is not an understatement. They are driving the most important change in progress that is taking place in our world right now,” Dell said.
To close the event, along with Dell Salesforce With CEO Mark Benioff IBM CEO Arvind Krishna awarded Huang the “Leadership Legendary” award in recognition of his unparalleled success.
However, the often underrecognized source of Huang’s achievements. The ability to adapt it and the humility he continues to lead, even after all his victory. Our interaction with him quickly revealed how unique he was.
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1980s, Intel Co-founder Andy Grove warns that “only delusions survive,” suggesting an important inflection point in strategic decision-making. Recently, Huang says that this fluid mindset is everyday and not an episode. I’m fighting now Microsoft To win the title of the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, Nvidia shares have increased almost tenfold since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022. $27 billion Ends in 2023 $130 billion In 2025, it was driven by unprecedented demand for accelerated computing and AI.
Benioff described Han as the person who predicted “nvidia’s future and our industry will become AI.” He said, “No one else could see it… it was a vision. It was clear. It was an aim. (Jensen) can’t believe it.”
Since co-founding Nvidia in 1993, Huang has been working with Pioneer’s keen on accelerated computing. Its first major success came when it revolutionized the gaming industry with the spread of graphics processing units (GPUs) to improve computer graphics. It laid the foundations of modern AI, and organizations ultimately began to drive much of the world’s AI factories and infrastructure, rewiring the industrial, technological and social aspects.
As Huang told the CEO Summit leader, Nvidia was founded with the paradoxical perspective of “reforming computers.” Instead of replacing generic computing as many were trying to do at the time, Huang and his co-founders believed it would be wise to augment it. “We turned out to be right,” he said modestly. Gambling was rewarded and chip producers were allowed lead With the GPU.
Then, more than 15 years later, in 2010, Nvidia pivoted after discovering that its CUDA programming model could be adapted to solve deep learning problems. “The big observations we made… the deep learning approach was very generalizable,” Huang continued. “We imagined what would happen if we were to expand on this issue, and ultimately what could be done if unsupervised learning was discovered where all data didn’t need to be human labelled.”
Nvidia and AI have been rethinked
He didn’t stop there. Eight years later, Nvidia adapted again. As he said, the final “great observation” and his team was “AI is really about a whole new industry.” It was an industry that was likely to transform all industries… like electricity… and that’s why I’m here for so many reasons.”
Looking back at his success, Huang shared what led him and Nvidia to where he is today.
Perhaps the most spectacular attribute of the fan is his humility. He thanked Benioff, Krishna and Del for his award and began his remarks by calling him “my hero.” He consistently praised his co-founder and Nvidia’s team during his comments. And he once again closed in honor of the three award presenters, believing them to “it’s been extremely helpful in shaping the computer industry as we know it today.”
It is rarely as successful as Huang adapts seamlessly and has the ability to lead effectively throughout a period of disruption. They also publicly recognize the contributions of other industrial giants that have become prominent before them.
Looking back at Huang’s pivot, IBM’s Krishna told the gathered CEO:
The success of Nvidia CEO suggests that it’s time to abandon the management mantra of the 1980s. As the baseball philosopher coach warned at the time, “The future isn’t like that before!”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is a professor of administrative practice at Leicester Crown and president and founder of Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Stephen Henriques is a senior researcher at Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute and former McKinsey & Co. I’m a consultant.
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