Word: thorntons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...defined industry lines, all this seems more like a potpourri than a company. Almost every time that Litton announces a new product or acquisition-which is almost every week-there is a new flurry of predictions that at last the fast-stepping Texan has gone too far. If Tex Thornton's business philosophy often confuses his critics, it is perhaps because it is so breathtakingly broad and ambitious. He is interested in change, and pursues it wherever he can. Litton's present and future are tied together by a commitment to capitalize on the products, projects and processes...
...Thornton has thought about this revolution perhaps more than any other man. "We are experiencing technological change at by far the fastest rate man has ever known," he says. "In the past 20 years we have seen more technological change than in all recorded history. It took 112 years for photography to go from being discovered to a commercial product, 56 years for the telephone, 35 years for radio, 15 years for radar, twelve years for television. But it took only six years for the atom bomb to become an operational reality, and five years for transistors to find their...
...Change brings its hazards, of course, but it also brings many unprecedented opportunities-and it is Thornton's job to see that Litton takes advantage of the opportunities. Many men in both business and Government consider Thornton to be the best executive in the U.S. today. Yet his gifts are not always on display, and in many ways the low-key Texan does not fit the usual conception of a dynamic manager at work in an exciting industry...
Deeply involved in technology, Thornton is neither a professionally trained engineer nor a technician, and, though he is a great believer in running things under tight statistical control, he places little reliance on electronic logic in making management decisions. In a field where speed is a motto, he snaps out no instant decisions, likes to take his time about making up his mind. He overcomes a problem by attacking it with dogged tenacity, painstakingly learning all the facts, then turning them over slowly in his mind many times until they fit together into a decision-a decision that often comes...
...Thornton is a dreamer and a vision ary who talks constantly about the way-out future, yet he is also an intensely practical man who has made realities out of many of his early dreams. Immensely wealthy and forever faced with decisions about spending millions, he is nonetheless a penny pincher who makes waiters and taxi drivers scowl at his meager tips, is indifferent to carrying cash (his secretary presses pocket money on him just before he goes on every trip) and always takes a single room rather than a suite when he is staying in a hotel...