I do sometimes worry when there are appointments of people who are very focussed one way (Engineering and Technical) or the other (Business and, /shiver/ Marketing). While it can be extremely useful to understand the technical limitations for directing a company, or on the other side focussing on decisions that will be better for the company, there is sometimes the an attractiveness to go too much into their comfort zone than is ideal. I suppose what to take away from that is the Board team needs to be balanced and not just made up of 'big' names that may steer the company in a less than ideal direction.
I think the opposite is exactly why AMD has been failing. Read helped "duct tape" AMD to working condition but he was focusing too much on the company being a business. He came from Lenovo, and a computer distributor is very different from semiconductor design and production. All that being said, Rory was more focused on getting/keeping customers interested rather than improving the products. Su wants to make a better product. This in turn will keep customers interested. AMD spent too much time and money on marketing and was banking on people changing their code to work with their designs. If things worked out the way they wanted, they'd be doing fine right now, but that's not how the world works. I'm sure Su knows that, so I'm hoping the company releases something to give intel a run for their money.
