The Working Week 24 - Employee Ownership

This week, Wayne talks about the benefits of employee ownership with J. Robert Beyster, founder of one of the largest and most successful employee-owned companies in the world.

In 1969, physicist Robert Beyster and a small group of colleagues founded Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), renting offices next to a ballet studio in a Californian village and surviving on a couple of consulting contracts.

He talks to Wayne about the early days of SAIC and how he turned a single-owner company into one owned by its employees.

By the time he retired after 35 years at the helm, Beyster owned less than two per cent of the company's stock. But in the meantime, SAIC had become a Fortune 500 giant with 44,000 employees. In 2006, it had revenues of more than $8 billion

In some ways, he says, employee ownership has made SAIC a company of entrepreneurs. "Not just one or two at the top, but a company in which those who are motivated and capable can organize, manage, and assume the risk of different aspects of the company. In return they received not only salary, but ownership of the company."

After retiring in 2004, Dr Beyster has continued to promote innovation and employee ownership through his Foundation for Enterprise Development and the Beyster Institute at the University of California in San Diego.

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