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Title: Senior Vice President
Company: Intel Corp.
Location: Santa Clara, California
Age: 57

Albert Yu runs on two clock speeds: He works in real time, but he thinks three years into the future. "Innovation is 80% about solving problems,'' says Yu, the senior vice president of Intel's Microprocessor Products Group and the person responsible for stoking the innovative engines of the world's semiconductor superpower. "People who want to solve problems think constantly. On the weekends, I'm home -- not working, but worrying, which is part of thinking."

In his 26-year career at Intel, Yu, who has a BS from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD from Stanford University (both degrees in electrical engineering), has shepherded a succession of killer chips from mere glimmers of ideas into the power packs driving the world's most sophisticated computations and connections. To make that happen, Yu not only operates at two speeds; he also has two jobs. The first is to visualize the next generation of Intel microprocessors and to foresee a more-complex world that Intel will help to create and, ultimately, to simplify. Yu's second job is to foster an attitude at Intel: to continue the managerial tradition instilled by company founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and made legendary by Andy Grove -- the give-no-quarter, raise-the-bar, only-the-paranoid-survive Intel team spirit.

Sometimes Yu's greatest insights come from failures -- just one of the principles of innovation described in his new book, "Creating the Digital Future: The Secrets of Consistent Innovation at Intel" (Free Press, 1998). And sometimes the failures are personal: In 1977, when he left Intel to start his own company, Yu peered so far over the horizon that he came face-to-face with bankruptcy lawyers. (In the end, he sold the business rather than go bankrupt.) His goal was to build a $499 home computer, but he was working a couple of decades too far into the future. "I learned so much -- about management, cash flow, how to prepare for bankruptcy court,'' he recalls, laughing. "But what I really learned was how to do things dramatically better."

Fast Company spoke with Yu at Intel's Santa Clara, California headquarters last September, during a week in which global markets were tanking and a number of Silicon Valley companies were explaining poor earnings reports. But on this day, Intel announced that it would exceed revenue estimates for the third quarter by 8% to 10% -- a clear uptrend in what had been a brutal semiconductor slump. Yu was elated -- but not surprised. It seemed an opportune time to ask him about his principles for applied innovation.

Innovation has a human pace and scale.

Understand that the creative process is chaotic. There will be plenty of times when you say, "We don't know how to do this." But humans are persistent. They say, "We've got to make it happen." Good companies harness that persistence and get people to believe that they can make it happen.

Innovation doesn't happen until you want to do something badly enough. Start with the goal in mind. Be prepared to take risks in developing new products and in bringing new people together. Interaction between people is essential -- get in each other's faces. Confrontation is a wonderful tool, as long as it isn't personal and is channeled toward the ultimate goal. Don't waste each other's time -- be blunt with each other.