Editing National Semiconductor (section)

===Weaknesses of Sporck's leadership===
National Semiconductor under Sporck was not particularly invested in marketing strategies, even though it had the vision to launch itself into new and apparent opportunities in the consumer market. Sporck had applied strategies that made National Semiconductor function as a low-cost mass manufacturer of semiconductor commodities.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DA1431F932A25752C0A967958260|title=Business section, The New York Times January 11, 1991 by Andrew Pollack | date=January 11, 1991 | access-date=May 19, 2010}}</ref>

A few key executives and engineers left the company in 1981. Among them was [[Pierre Lamond]], who had been the chief IC designer (now partner at [[Sequoia Capital]]).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sequoiacap.com/people/pierre-lamond/|title=Pierre Lamond Bio}}</ref> Robert Swanson's departure in the same year to found [[Linear Technology]] was another indication of the appropriateness of organisational strategies of National Semiconductor under Sporck. "For 13 of 14 years at National, I was a gung-ho guy. Then, the company started to get big. I kept looking at all the companies whose butts we'd been kicking. And then National started organizing itself like them. It was frustrating." Swanson said in the May 13, 1991, ''Business Journal-San Jose''.

Sporck's strategy of outsourcing sales to external sources meant National Semiconductor did not have sufficient or responsive resources to respond to requests from innovators, inventors and academic research—which would have been helpful in the technological innovation boom of the 1980s.

National Semiconductor's lack and loss of innovation meant it was producing products that were easily copied and reproducible. It may have been the cheapest manufacturer in the United States, but it was not the cheapest compared to the Asian manufacturers. This weakness in National Semiconductor was evident in its failure to compete during the globalisation of Japanese semiconductor companies in the 1980s, followed by globalisation of Taiwanese and South Korean companies.