Author Description

An in-depth portrait of business visionary John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems. Under the leadership of John Chambers, Cisco Systems has grown to pass Intel as the most valuable company in Silicon Valley, and become only the third company in history (after GE and Microsoft) to push past the $300 billion mark in market capitalization. Since Chambers became President and CEO in 1995 the company's share price has gone up by nearly 800%. Cisco systems supplies the technology "plumbing" that powers the internet. It controls half of the $21 billion business-network market and has itself become a model e-company, refashioning itself in order to get maximum benefits and effiencies from the Internet (using the Internet they have reduced the process of closing the books at the end of each quarter from ten days to one day). Business writer Robert Slater explains in-depth Chambers' management style and business strategies, how he has used those strategies to build Cisco into the Internet's most important enterprise, and how he plans to adapt them in the future towards implementing his goal of creating a Global Communications Network.