Fortt Knox

Twenty-five years ago, the man who is now CEO of the world's largest maker of computer chips was an engineer at the company. And he made an error that almost got him fired. "I wiped out the output of an entire factory for a week," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich tells me in the latest episode of the Fortt Knox podcast. "I'm lucky to be employed at Intel, sometimes I say." But instead of dooming him, his handling of the problem influenced the company culture, helping to birth a system called "Copy Exactly" that's become a part of its identity. Krzanich went on to make a name for himself as the executive responsible for all of Intel's factories, a job that prepared him to be CEO.