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MS '77, ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Product invisibility as mission statement? Benhamou wouldn't argue. Just don't mistake it for reluctance to grab a healthy share of the exploding computer networking market. After all, Benhamou's company is among the world's top suppliers of adapters, hubs, routers, and switches-the sleek electronic gearboxes now connecting computers in classrooms, workplaces, and homes around the world.
"People don't want to feel that they're crossing some sort of network," explains Benhamou of the demand for a seamless infrastructure of connectivity. "They want to touch the information directly."
Benhamou has a long history of figuring out what networking customers really want. These instincts were first awakened during a Stanford class visit to Xerox PARC where he saw the earliest incarnation of Ethernet. It was during this revelation on Hillview Road that the young EE student also first realized that the mind-set needed to understand the networking customer-anticipating connectivity needs, monitoring infrastructure developments, and responding with appropriate products and services‹was profoundly different from the mind-set needed to deal with the more visible elements of the computing market.
"You can be a great computer company or a great networking company," states Benhamou, "but you can't be both." It's a belief that has been tested twice in Benhamou's career.
The first test came after three years of working for the microprocessor company Zilog where he had helped develop Z-Net, an early commercial local area network. Following his nascent interests in networking, Benhamou left in 1981 to co-found Bridge Communications-along with Bill Carrico and two other Stanford alums, Judith Estrin and Jean-Pierre Boespflug. Bridge thrived, making equipment that connected terminals to host mainframes. In 1987, it merged with 3Com.
And thus began the second test. Despite financial success, the company cultures clashed. The 3Com people remained computing-centric while the Bridge faction maintained their networking perspective-a combination that was difficult to manage. Direction was uncertain. Guess what kind of company 3Com became when Benhamou was named CEO in 1990?
"It's impossible to have both mind-sets," insists Benhamou. "The industry is so competitive that once you figure out what you're good at, you need to stick with it and do it better and better and better. It's the same reason Michael Jordan can't be a very good baseball player."
Which brings us to Barry Bonds and Steve Young. For all the talk of building networking products that maintain a low profile, why has Benhamou now hoisted his company's name onto San Francisco's Candlestick Park?
The answer, not surprisingly, involves customers. Lots of new networking customers. Having built his Santa Clara company's success on sales to large corporations and network service providers, Benhamou now realizes that the network is expanding from large enterprises into the realm of small businesses and the home. The new markets require new strategies, new lines of consumer-friendly products, snazzy packaging...and the drive-by recognition of a 3Com Park.
Benhamou has become an evangelist for this emerging connectivity. As former chair of the American Electronics Association's National Information Infrastructure Task Force, he advised on blueprints for the information superhighway. And as a board member of the nonprofit Smart valley Inc., he helps Silicon valley schools and industries put the new networks to work.
As 3Com competes in the booming networking market, Benhamou says the key challenge will be riding the growth smoothly. He points out that 3Com is growing-appropriately enough-as an organizationally and geographically networked company. With offices in more than 30 countries, he says 3Com is well positioned to collaborate spontaneously on emerging opportunities. With the current pace of change in today's networking technologies and standards-Benhamou cites the shift from routers to switches and from Ethernet to ATM-such nimbleness will be critical to 3Com's continued success.
And success, it seems, is the other mind-set that Benhamou developed at Stanford. "You see, before coming here I had no notion that I could become an entrepreneur," he recalls.
Born on the border of Algeria and Morocco, Benhamou moved with his family to their native France during the North African movements for independence in the 1950s. Schooled in France, Benhamou says Stanford first showed him that an entrepreneurial career, in a meritocratic system with the freedom to create, was best pursued here in Silicon valley.
Eric Benhamou, it turns out, has two core beliefs: in the primacy of networking and in the opportunity for personal entrepreneurialism. Somehow, amidst the breakneck pace of this Internet age, he has managed to meld these two beliefs. Listening to his plans, looking into his large calm eyes, it is now impossible to tell them apart.
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