Industrial Influence: Sangiovanni as Entrepreneur and Consigliere

Picture an elaborate formal dinner on the top floor of a private club in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, hosted by the CEO of a major Japanese company. Japan´s electronics giants had become the world´s top memory chip producers and were threatening to eclipse U.S. producers in global semiconductor market share. Several of us had flown overnight to attend the dinner. Only one hadn´t slept a wink. With the endless enthusiasm and boundless energy that has always marked him, that same sleepless soul held nonstop court throughout the long evening, enthralling his Japanese hosts and American colleagues with an account of how design know-how would revitalize the U.S. industry. Alberto was “in the house.”