Moving at the Speed of Light
NVIDIA's founder Jensen Huang demands his employees work at the "Speed of Light"—constrained only by physics, not politics or finances. This philosophy requires breaking projects into component tasks with target completion times that assume zero delays. "How fast can you do it, and why aren't you doing it that fast?" became his measuring stick for performance. When developing the RIVA 128 graphics chip, Huang upended traditional processes by developing driver software before the physical prototype existed—shaving nearly a year off production time. This approach helped NVIDIA outpace competitors by refusing to accept incremental improvements or internal sandbagging. Even as the company grew, Huang maintained this urgency, once considering replacing the concept with something "faster than light" (the "Mycelium Spore Drive" from Star Trek), before sticking with the original metaphor for clarity's sake.