Achieving success upon inheriting a successful business from your father is difficult. Robert Galvin inherited one of the country’s leading consumer radio and two-way radio manufacturers from his father, Paul, in the late 1950s. Over the next 30 years leading Motorola, Robert turned his father’s $290 million company into a globally dominant semi-conductor and cell phone giant with annual sales of $10.8 billion.

Born in 1922, Galvin started working for Motorola in 1940, starting at the bottom in the Motorola stock room and learning the business from both older employees and his father while attending Notre Dame and the University of Chicago. In 1948, he was elected executive vice president and, in 1956, was named president of the company. He took over Motorola completely after his father died on November 5, 1959.

Motorola was already a successful car radio and mobile telephone manufacturer in the late 1950s. Following a quick in-and-out in the mid-1950s, Galvin brought Motorola back into the color TV business in 1961. But Galvin soon recognized that the Japanese would exploit their lower costs and sold the business to a Japanese company, plowing the proceeds back into developing new businesses such as semi-conductors. Galvin assumed his father’s position as chairman of the board of Motorola in 1964, and in 1970 also was named CEO, a post that had remained vacant since his father held it.

In the late 1960s, Galvin led Motorola’s entry into the nascent cell phone business, encouraging the costly development of the first portable handset in 1973. Galvin’s chance demonstration of the portable to President Reagan in the early 1980s led to the White House’s support of opening up the cell phone business to competition rather than allowing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to award a monopoly to AT&T. While Motorola was establishing a dominant position in the cell phone hardware business, Galvin led the fight to open up Japanese markets to American goods and promoted the adoption of Japanese quality management methods. Galvin created both successful consumer products and direct-to-industry businesses while maintaining an entrepreneurial corporate culture. In recognition of his service to the American business community, President Reagan presented Galvin and Motorola one of the first Malcolm Baldridge awards in 1988. He was elected to the National Business Hall of Fame and in 1991, received the National Medal of Technology.

In the late 1980s, Galvin began to step back from day-to-day involvement. In 1986, he retired as CEO and, in 1990, he stepped down as chairman of the board to become chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors. He finally retired from the board in May 2001.

But Galvin has remained active since retiring. He was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Illinois Institute of Technology; chaired a Department of Energy task force called the Galvin Commission to research alternative futures; he chaired International Sematech, the chip consortium; co-chaired the Center for Strategic and International Studies on radio frequency spectrum management; served as vice chairman of the board of trustees for the Universities Research Association and, was a member of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute.