20世纪80年代的管理畅销书《追求卓越》（In Search of Excellence）倡导的一个重要管理理念是，领导者应“坚守本业”，只涉足“自己最熟悉的领域”。这种封闭性或许曾经损害了上一代企业的适应能力，而且在人工智能时代，这显然已非明智之选。两周前，英伟达（Nvidia）创始人黄仁勋向来自各行各业的175位顶尖CEO揭示了他不止一次（而是两次）地摒弃了原有商业计划，拥抱技术前沿颠覆性创新，灵感源自他的偶像迈克尔·戴尔的模式。
而黄仁勋的偶像也不禁对这位英伟达CEO的表现大加赞赏，称赞他领导公司走在了全球商业的前沿。戴尔是出席我们第154届耶鲁大学首席执行官领导力研究所（Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute）CEO论坛的行业巨头之一，本届峰会共同探讨了在人工智能持续快速发展的背景下，他们如何管理战略创新。
戴尔表示：“毫不夸张地说，黄仁勋和英伟达正在推动整个世界当前发生的最重要的变革。”
在峰会闭幕之际，戴尔与赛富时（Salesforce）CEO马克·贝尼奥夫以及IBM CEO阿尔温德·克里希纳共同向黄仁勋颁发了“传奇领袖”奖项，以表彰他无与伦比的成功。
然而，人们往往忽视黄仁勋取得成就的真正原因：他具备的适应能力以及即使在取得所有成功后仍保持谦逊的领袖品质。我们与他的互动很快揭示了他作为一名领导者的独到之处。
将重新开始作为每日要务
20世纪80年代，英特尔（Intel）联合创始人安迪·格鲁夫曾警告说“只有偏执狂才能生存”，这指出了战略决策中的关键转折点。如今，黄仁勋表示，这种灵活的思维模式是日常性的，而非偶尔出现的。自2022年11月ChatGPT推出以来，英伟达的股价已飙升近十倍，目前正与微软（Microsoft）角逐全球市值最高公司的头衔。在加速计算和人工智能需求空前增长的推动下，其营收从2023财年的约270亿美元激增至2025财年的超过1,300亿美元。
贝尼奥夫这样描述黄仁勋：他曾预言“英伟达和我们行业的未来将是人工智能”。他补充道：“当时无人能预见这一点……这是远见。是清晰的思路，是使命。 [黄仁勋]真了不起。”
自1993年黄仁勋与他人共同创立英伟达以来，该公司一直不懈努力，开创加速计算领域。其首个重大成功源于通过普及图形处理器（GPU）来改进计算机图形，从而彻底改变了游戏产业。这一举措为现代人工智能奠定了基础，并引领公司最终为全球大部分人工智能工厂和基础设施提供动力，重塑了工业、技术乃至社会生活的诸多方面。
正如黄仁勋在CEO峰会上对领导者们所言，英伟达的创立秉持一种“重塑计算机”的逆向思维。与当时许多公司旨在取代通用计算不同，黄仁勋和他的联合创始人们认为，增强通用计算才是更明智之举。他谦逊地调侃道：“事实证明我们是对的。”这场豪赌获得了回报，使这家芯片制造商在GPU领域独占鳌头。
随后，在超过15年后的2010年，英伟达在发现其CUDA编程模型可适用于解决深度学习问题后，做出了重大转变。黄仁勋继续说道：“我们的重要发现是……深度学习的方法具有极强的普适性。我们设想了如果将这个问题规模化会发生什么，并最终设想了如果实现无监督学习（即每条数据都无需人工标注），会有什么样的结果。”
英伟达与人工智能的再度重塑
他并未就此止步。八年后，英伟达再次做出调整。正如黄仁勋告诉我们的那样，他和团队得出的最终“重要发现”是“人工智能实际上关乎一个全新的产业”。这是一个可能“像电力一样……变革所有行业”的产业。这很大程度上也是我站在这里的原因。”
回顾成功之路，黄仁勋分享了引领他和英伟达走到今天的关键：“我们有勇气将问题逐步拆解，并重塑了我们公司以及计算方式的方方面面。”
然而，黄仁勋最令人钦佩的品质或许是他的谦逊。他在演讲开场便感谢贝尼奥夫、克里希纳和戴尔为他颁奖，称他们是“我心目中的英雄”。在讲话中，他始终将功劳归于他的联合创始人和英伟达团队。在结尾时，他再次向三位颁奖人表示敬意，赞扬他们在“塑造我们今天所知的计算机产业方面发挥了如此关键的作用”。
像黄仁勋这样成功的领导者，很少能兼具无缝适应的能力、在动荡时期有效领导的能力，以及公开认可那些早于他们成名的行业巨擘所做贡献的胸怀。
在思考黄仁勋的战略转型时，IBM的克里希纳对在场的CEO们表示：“让整个公司从[他们]赖以盈利超过20年的领域转型……这不仅需要有远见，更要有勇气……[唯有他拥有]那份坚韧、毅力与才华才能做到这一点。”
英伟达CEO的成功表明，是时候摒弃20世纪80年代的管理箴言了。正如当年的棒球哲人教练所警告的那样：“未来已与过去大不相同！”（财富中文网）
本文作者杰富瑞·索南菲尔德现任耶鲁大学首席执行官领导力研究所管理实践莱斯特·克伦教授兼学院院长和创始人。史蒂芬·亨里克斯现任耶鲁大学首席执行官领导力研究所高级研究员，曾担任麦肯锡公司（McKinsey & Co.）顾问。
Fortune.com上发表的评论文章中表达的观点，仅代表作者本人的观点，不代表《财富》杂志的观点和立场。
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
A key lesson advocated in the 1980s management bestseller In Search of Excellence advised leaders to “stick with your knitting” and remain “only with the businesses you know best.” That insularity may have hurt adaptiveness a generation ago and is surely not the wisdom for the AI generation. Two weeks ago, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang revealed to 175 top CEOs across industries how he tossed out his business plans not once but twice to embrace disruptive new advances on the frontiers of technology, drawing upon the model of his idol, Michael Dell.
And Huang’s idol could not help but praise the Nvidia CEO for his performance leading the organization to the forefront of global business. Dell was among the industry titans who joined us at our 154th Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute CEO Forum to discuss how they manage strategic innovations as AI continues to evolve quickly.
“Jensen and Nvidia—this is not an understatement—they are driving the most important change in progress that is occurring in our entire world right now,” Dell said.
To close the event, Dell, along with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, presented Huang with the “Legend in Leadership” award in recognition of his unmatched success.
But what often receives less recognition is the source of Huang’s accomplishments: the ability to adapt and the humility with which he continues to lead, even after all his triumphs. Our interaction with him quickly revealed how unique a leader he is.
Making new beginnings everyday priorities
In the 1980s, Intel cofounder Andy Grove warned that “only the paranoid survive,” suggesting key inflection points in strategic decision making. These days, Huang says that this fluid mindset is daily and not episodic. Now battling with Microsoft to claim the title of the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, Nvidia stock has increased nearly tenfold since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022. Revenues have boomed from approximately $27 billion in fiscal year 2023 to over $130 billion in fiscal year 2025, driven by unprecedented demand for accelerated computing and AI.
Benioff described Huang as someone who predicted that “the future of Nvidia and the future of our industry would be AI.” He added, “No one else could see that…It was vision. It was clarity. It was purpose. [Jensen] is incredible.”
Since Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993, the company has worked relentlessly to pioneer accelerated computing. Its first major success came when it revolutionized the gaming industry with the popularization of graphics processing units (GPUs) to improve computer graphics. That laid the foundation for modern AI and led the organization to eventually power much of the world’s AI factories and infrastructure, rewiring industry, technology, and aspects of society.
Nvidia was founded with a contrarian perspective to “reinvent computers,” as Huang told leaders at the CEO summit. Instead of replacing general-purpose computing, as many aimed to do at the time, Huang and his cofounders believed it would be wiser to augment it. “It turned out we were right,” he modestly quipped. The gamble paid off, allowing the chip producer to lead in GPUs.
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 great observation that we made was…the approach of deep learning was quite generalizable,” Huang continued. “We imagined what would happen if we were to scale this problem and ultimately imagined what could be done if unsupervised learning, where every single piece of data doesn’t have to be human labeled, were to be discovered.”
Nvidia and AI reimagined—again
He did not stop there. Eight years later, Nvidia adapted again. The final “great observation” Huang and his team made was that “AI is really about a whole new industry,” as he told us. It was an industry likely to “transform every industry…like electricity…And that’s in a lot of ways why I’m here.”
Reflecting on his success, Huang shared what led him and Nvidia to where they are today: “We had the courage to break the problem down step by step and reinvented everything about our company and everything about how computing was done.”
Perhaps Huang’s most admirable attribute, however, is his humility. He began his remarks by thanking Benioff, Krishna, and Dell for presenting his award, calling them “heroes of mine.” He consistently credited his cofounders and the team at Nvidia during his comments. And he closed by again paying tribute to his three award presenters, crediting them as having “been so instrumental in shaping the computer industry that we know today.”
Rarely do leaders as successful as Huang possess the ability to adapt seamlessly, lead effectively through periods of disruption, and publicly recognize the contributions of other industry titans who came to prominence before them.
Reflecting on Huang’s pivot, IBM’s Krishna told the gathered CEOs, “Pivoting the whole company away from what had made [them] money for over 20 years…that takes courage beyond vision…[only he had] the fortitude, the grit as well as the brilliance to be able to get there.”
The Nvidia CEO’s success suggests it’s time to toss out the management mantras of the 1980s. As baseball’s philosopher coach warned back then, “The future ain’t what it used to be!”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor in Management Practice and president and founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Stephen Henriques is a senior research fellow at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute and a former McKinsey & Co. consultant.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.