Andrew Grove
Andrew "'Andy" Stephen Grove' was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic during the 1956 revolution at the age of 20 and moved to the United States, where he finished his education. He was the third employee and eventual third CEO of Intel, transforming the company into the world's largest semiconductor company.
As a result of his work at Intel, along with his books and professional articles, Grove had a considerable influence on the electronics manufacturing industries worldwide. He has been called the "guy who drove the growth phase" of Silicon Valley. In 1997, Time magazine chose him as "Man of the Year", for being "the person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and the innovative potential of microchips." One source notes that by his accomplishments at Intel alone, he "merits a place alongside the great business leaders of the 20th century."
Personal life and education
Grove was born as Gróf András István to a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Mária and György Gróf. At the age of four he contracted scarlet fever, which was nearly fatal and caused partial hearing loss.When he was eight, the Nazis occupied Hungary and deported nearly 500,000 Jews to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. To avoid being arrested, Grove and his mother took on false identities and were sheltered by friends. His father, however, was arrested and taken to an Eastern Labor Camp where he was severely tortured and forced to do slave labor. The father was reunited with his family only after the war.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when he was 20, he left his home and family and escaped across the border into Austria. Penniless and barely able to speak English, in 1957 he eventually made his way to the United States. He later changed his name to the anglicized Andrew S. Grove. Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs:
Soon after arriving in the United States, in New York's Catskill Resort, in 1957, he met his future wife, Eva Kastan, who was an Austrian refugee. They met while he held a job as a busboy and she was a waitress while studying at Hunter College. One year after they met, in June 1958 they married in Queens, New York, in a Roman Catholic ceremony. They remained married until Grove died. They had two daughters, Karen Grove and Robie Livingstone, and eight grandchildren.
Even though he arrived in the United States with little money, Grove retained a "passion for learning."
He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960. The New York Times stated that "a refugee became a senior in engineering."
Grove attended and graduated with his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.
In 2000, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease; he became a contributor to several foundations that sponsor research towards a cure. He died at his home on March 21, 2016, at the age of 79; the cause of death was not publicly disclosed.
Career
Starting Intel
After completing his Ph.D. in 1963, Grove worked at Fairchild Semiconductor as a researcher, and by 1967 had become its assistant director of development. His work there made him familiar with the early development of integrated circuits, which would lead to the "microcomputer revolution" in the 1970s. In 1967, he wrote a college textbook on the subject, Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices.File:Andy Grove Robert Noyce Gordon Moore 1978 edit.jpg|thumb|left|Left to right: Andy Grove, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore
In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore co-founded Intel, after they and Grove left Fairchild Semiconductor. Grove joined on the day of its incorporation, although he was not a founder. Fellow Hungarian émigré Leslie L. Vadász was Intel's fourth employee. Grove worked initially as the company's director of engineering, and helped get its early manufacturing operations started. In 1983, he wrote a book, High Output Management, in which he described many of his methods and manufacturing concepts.
Initially, Intel primarily manufactured static memory chips for mainframe computers, but in the early/mid-1970s Intel introduced one of the earliest digital watches, an electronic calculator, and also the world's first general-purpose microprocessor, the 4-bit 4004. By 1974 Intel had developed the 8-bit 8008 and quickly thereafter, in 1975, the 8080 processor, which would become the core of the Altair, the world's first so-called PC which foreshadowed the PC revolution. Soon came the 8086 16-bit microprocessor and a cost-reduced version, the 8088, which IBM chose for its IBM PC which brought personal computers to the masses. In 1985, Intel produced the 32-bit 80386 microprocessor which began a long line of increasingly powerful microprocessors including the 80486, the Pentium, and a plethora of supporting integrated circuits and computers built with them.
Even though Intel had invented most of the types of memory in use at the time including EPROM, by 1985, with less demand for their memory chips due to the challenges created by Japanese "dumping" of memory chips at below-cost prices, Grove was forced to make radical changes. As a result, he chose to discontinue producing DRAMs and focus instead on manufacturing microprocessors. Grove, along with Intel's sales manager to IBM, Earl Whetstone, played a key role in negotiating with IBM to use only Intel microprocessors in all of their new personal computers.
The company's revenue increased from $2,672 in its first year to $20.8 billion in 1997. Grove was appointed Intel's president in 1979, CEO in 1987, and then chairman of the board in 1997. In May 1998 Grove relinquished the post of CEO to Craig Barrett, as Grove had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years earlier, though he remained chairman until November 2004. Since then Grove remained at Intel as a senior advisor, and has also been a lecturer at Stanford University. He reflected back upon Intel's growth through the years:
Grove is credited with having transformed Intel from a manufacturer of memory chips into the world's dominant producer of microprocessors for PC, servers, and general-purpose computing. During his tenure as CEO, Grove oversaw a 4,500% increase in Intel's market capitalization from $4 billion to $197 billion, making it the world's 7th largest company, with 64,000 employees. Most of the company's profits were reinvested in research and development, along with building new facilities, in order to produce improved and faster microprocessors.
Management methods and style
As director of operations, manufacturing became Grove's primary focus and his management style relied heavily on his management concepts. As the company expanded and he was appointed chairman, Grove became more involved in strategic decision-making, including establishing markets for new products, coordinating manufacturing processes and developing new partnerships with smaller companies.Grove helped create the Intel Architecture Laboratory in Oregon to ensure that software was developed in time to take advantage of their new microprocessors. Grove stated that "you are making decisions about what the information technology world will want five years into the future."
Only the Paranoid Survive
As CEO, he wanted his managers to always encourage experimentation and prepare for changes, making a case for the value of paranoia in business. He became known for his guiding motto: "Only the paranoid survive," and wrote a management book with the same title, published in 1996. As a result, he urged senior executives to allow people to test new techniques, new products, new sales channels, and new customers, to be ready for unexpected shifts in business or technology. This mantra of Groves influenced the management philosophy of a number of well-known leaders like Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, and Reed Hastings.Biographer Jeremy Byman observed that Grove "was the one person at Intel who refused to let the company rest on its laurels." Grove explains his reasoning:
A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.
Strategic inflection points
Grove popularized the concept of the "strategic inflection point," a crucial time that demands a major change in strategy due to shifts in the business environment. A company's growth depends on recognizing and effectively navigating these points.Strategic inflection points cause a mismatch between a company's current strategies and changes in the industry, something Grove called strategic dissonance. "To overcome this, the dissonance must be resolved by aligning the company's strategies with the new reality, requiring proactive and adaptive leadership that continually assesses and adjusts the company's strategies to keep pace with shifts in the business environment," taught Grove.
Grove believed that the role of Helpful Cassandras, individuals who raise red flags about potential problems and challenge the dominant view, are crucial in identifying and mitigating risks before they become bigger issues. He emphasized the importance of organizations listening to the warnings of Cassandras and taking action, instead of ignoring or suppressing them, in order to identify and successfully address strategic inflection points.
Competitive mindset
Grove had a strong competitive mindset, viewing competition as the key driver of innovation and progress. He encouraged companies to aim for industry leadership and constantly seek ways to improve their offerings, processes and operations. He likened himself to a coach and viewed the manager's role as one of fueling employee motivation to excel. He believed "good fear" could play a productive role."The quality guru W. Edwards Deming advocated stamping out fear in corporations. I have trouble with the simplemindedness of this dictum. The most important role of managers is to create an environment where people are passionately dedicated to winning in the marketplace. Fear plays a major role in creating and maintaining such passion. Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators."