Larry Ellison was behind my second “Who is?” game. Congrats again to François-Albert.

Everyone knows the joke (also the title of a book) about Larry Ellison: “Do you know the difference between God & Larry Ellison?” No? Well, “God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison”.

I’m an admiror of Ellison’s achievements and methods. Alongside with his two partners Bob Miner and Ed Oates, Larry Ellison pioneered the database enterprise software market, showing some kind of vision skills few people can claim to be gifted with.

Despite his bad reputation (playboy lifestyle, everyone jealous about his numerous rather pretty girlfriends, admitted spying on Microsoft in 2001, etc.), Ellison is no inward-looking person. Actually, he is the outward-looking entrepreneur by definition: when working at 45%-owned-by-Fujitsu Amdahl, Ellison got to travel a lot to Japan. The discovery of the japanese business culture basically changed his approach to business and perspectives about life in general: Ellison observed a society where groups mattered more than individuals, where people could be aggressive and extremely polite at the same time. One time, a Japanese executive said to him about competition “we believe that our competitors are stealing the rice out of the mouths of our children. In Japan, we think anything less than 100% market share is not enough. In Japan, we believe it is not sufficient that I succeed; everyone else must fail. We must destroy our competition“. Hence Larry Ellison’s understanding of the way competition should be fought, and Oracle’s aggressive quest for market share.

One more positive consequence of his understanding of Japan, the pre-dominance of the team on the individual. Ellison once said that he would never hire anybody he wouldn’t enjoy having lunch with three times a week. In this culturally aggressive company, an internal conflict would’ve been destructive if people didn’t get along perfectly. Despite appearances, Larry Ellison has always taken time to listen to his people and catch a grasp of their deep-inside personal motivation.

No wonder why Oracle was profitable from day One. It lost money during one single quarter of its lifetime in 1990. Astonishing, isn’t it?

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