The company that could've been Intel
Shockley Semiconductors - the company that could have become Intel, but didn't.
Intel was founded in 1968. But thirteen years before that, Intel's would be co-founders Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce had gone to work for William Shockley - the Nobel prize winning co-creator of the semiconductor-based transistor. Shockley had moved from Bell Labs in 1955, to set up Shockley semiconductors in Mountain View, California (yes, that Mountain View!).
Imagine. Moore and Noyce, among others, working with the creator of the semiconductor transistor. What it could have been. But by 1957, they and six other engineers had become so fed up with William Shockley that they quit without even any real job prospects.
"What happened? The simple answer is that Shockley proved to be such a terrible boss—paranoid, contemptuous of his subordinates, and arrogant—that he drove away that same brilliant young talent that he had so successfully recruited just a few months before." - writes Michael Malone in The Intel Trinity.
These 'traitorous eight' were to go on to found Fairchild Semiconductors where they invented the integrated circuit. And even later, Moore and Noyce would quit Fairchild to start Intel.
Some would have you believe that if you are a genius, you get to be an insufferable boss and people will still work for you. Clearly, that is not always the case. And it can come with a big cost. The fostering of innovation and brilliant people at any organization is a skill not many have. And indeed there might not even be a perfect formula. But it is worth figuring out.