Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American

This is a book that every businessman confronted with the problems of rapid change needs to read. Intel the giant technology company is Andy Grove, and Andy Grove is Intel. More than any other single individual, Grove left his footprint on this company. He started off as Intel's 3rd hire; the first two were Gordon Moore, and Bob Noyce, two other Silicon Valley legends. By the time Grove was finished there were tens of thousands of employees. You might recall that Gordon Moore, Andy's mentor is the creator of the famous "Moore's Law". There are many variations of Moore's Law, and Moore never called it a law by the way. Essentially it means that the computer power that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months, some say 2 years, and the cost drops by half. The law has basically held up since its inception in 1965. Richard Tedlow, the author is a full Professor at Harvard Business School. He has obviously put his heart and soul into this book. Andy Grove did not read this book until it was finished, and published. He did not want to get into a shoot-out about what was in the book. You might recall that Grove wrote several books himself. One of them had the great title, "Only the Paranoid Survive". I believe this biography is better than the books Grove wrote. Grove has stated that the author knows more about him, than he knows about himself. Upon reading the book, Grove could not figure out how the author was able to obtain so much information about him. In the end, this is what an author is supposed to do, isn't it? The vital concepts that I took out of Tedlow's writings are: 1) Here's a man that should have died three times before he got to America. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1946, as a Jewish born child he survives the Nazi invasion that included the extermination of 2/3rds of the Jewish population. He develops Scarlet fever, which should have killed him, and then the Russians defeat the Germans, and Andy survives the Russians who killed thousands of additional Hungarians. 2) Andy takes the enormously difficult step of leaving everything, his parents, his homeland, his friends, his groundings, and literally walks out of Hungary in the middle of the night during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Keep in mind, there's no Internet, no television pictures of America, nothing to base a move on. He simply demonstrates undaunted courage in walking away from everything that is familiar. 3) He makes it to the US, lives with an aunt and uncle in the Bronx, and goes to City College of NY because it's free and he has zero money. Graduating number 1 in his engineering class, he goes to California, and winds up at Berkeley where he earns a Ph.D. 4) He knew how to find MENTORS though, and this is a vital part of the book. You find great men, and MANAGE UP the relationship. From world renowned college professors, to the best known technical geniuses in the business world which include legends Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore, Andy Grove knew

I am not typically one to read biographies, but I had heard so much about Andy Grove over the years that I bought and read Tedlow's book. I'm glad I did. I agree with others that Tedlow is an excellent biographer and that he delivers a very readable text, though with occasional sidetracks into quoting poetry and classical stories to illustrate a point. It became clear that Tedlow very much admires Andy Grove with good reason, so I didn't let the occasional worshipful tone bother me. If you are looking for a book that goes into great detail about Andy Grove's personal life, this isn't it, though the book is the first place it was disclosed that Grove had developed Parkinson's. But if you want the story of how life shaped Grove and how he shaped his own life, if you want to see how Grove interacted with other leading figures of Silicon Valley and learn about the tough decisions he made during his tenure at Intel, you've come to the right place.

While reading and then reviewing most of Richard Tedlow's previous books, I was soon convinced that he is a cultural anthropologist as well as a business historian. With consummate skill, he creates a richly textured context within which he analyzes various corporate executives such as Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Robert Noyce, both Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Jr., Charles Revson, and Sam Walton. His talents are comparable with those of Joseph J. Ellis and David McCullough. As he explains in the introduction to this book, he interviewed dozens of people about the life and times of Andy Grove, asking each "What would make this book a page-turner for you?" Here are three responses: "I want to know how he thinks." "I want to know how all these decisions really did get made." "I want to know all the stuff that he won't tell you about." Tedlow provides answers to these and other questions as he rigorously examines "the life and times of an American" who was born András István Gróf in Hungary (in 1936), to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, he left his home and family under the cover of night, immigrating to the United States, and arriving in New York in 1957. He then earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York and then, after settling in California, he received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963. After working at Fairchild Semiconductor, Grove accepted Gordon Moore's invitation to become the third employee at a start-up, Intel Corporation (Integrated Electronics), of which he eventually became president in 1979, its CEO in 1987, and its chairman and CEO in 1997. He relinquished his CEO title in May 1998 and remained chairman of the board until November 2004. Of special interest to me is Tedlow's explanation of why, given Grove's background, he considers him to be an exemplary American. His reasons are convincing and best revealed within the book's lively narrative. Others have their own reasons for thinking so highly of this book. Here are three of mine. First, Tedlow immediately establishes and then sustains a personal, almost conversational relationship with his reader. In effect, he says "This is what I have learned about Andy Grove, both from him and from those who know him best." The reader tags along with Tedlow who serves as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide during an extensive "tour" of Grove's life and times. I also appreciate the skill with which Tedlow consistently maintains a balance between providing an abundance of biographical and historical details, and, keeping the narrative moving along in a timely manner. Years ago, I read Grove's Swimming Across and then Only the Paranoid Survive. While reading each book, I wished that I could learn more about the background to his countless adventures in Europe and then in the United States. I was especially interested in knowing much more about

In Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell's profile of the top 25 business leaders today, "Lasting Leadership", they cite one above all others, Intel's CEO Andy Grove. The one chapter on Grove (appropriately entitled "Best of the Best") certainly whet my appetite for Harvard Business School professor and historian Richard Tedlow's full-fledged biography, which turns out to be not only a thoughtful profile of Grove but also a fascinating historical overview of the technology industry. How these two aspects intertwine provides the most provocative parts of the book, in particular, how Grove's visionary acumen anticipated the growing demand for instant information and how the personal computer was to become a mandatory household and office item. Nonetheless, the more personal story behind Grove will interest many readers since his background reflects a remarkable transformation under the most adverse of circumstances. Born a Jew in 1936 Nazi-occupied Hungary when anti-Semitic laws were being fully enforced, Grove managed to survive not only the Nazi regime but the post-WWII Communist takeover. During the bloody Hungarian Revolution, he left his family and escaped to the U.S. when he was twenty. Penniless, he worked his way to a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Berkeley in 1963. He worked his way up from Fairchild Semiconductors, where they introduced the first integrated circuit, to become the fourth employee of Intel and begin an impressive upward climb. This is where Tedlow provides sharp insight into Grove's clever navigation though Intel's management structure under co-founders Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, and more importantly, how Grove became an acknowledged leader in Silicon Valley for his groundbreaking thinking. The author vividly shows how Grove transformed the company in 1986 from a memory device company to one focused on microprocessors in response to the cannibalization of the memory market by the then-threatening Japanese. Intriguingly, Tedlow ties the fears imbedded in Grove's persecution-filled childhood in Hungary to the fears he used as a motivating force to move ahead of the competition at Intel. It became clear that Grove knew a sense of certainty and constancy would be tantamount to suicide when it came to making the company thrive, and as Tedlow meticulously chronicles, his management team often felt the heat of his tension-driven style. There is no challenging the results of Grove's approach as Intel became the world's largest semiconductor company during his tenure. However, what I like most is how Tedlow dissects Grove's public failures as an essential part of his profile. The most egregious moment came in 1994 when Grove publicly denounced critics who found flaws in Intel's new Pentium processor. His stubbornness to acknowledge the problem showed him to be nakedly unaware of the evolution of Intel into a branded consumer product company, how quickly the Internet was disseminating information, and how customers were elevating the

Born in 1936 to Jewish parents in Hungary, Andy Grove began life with the deck heavily stacked against his very survival. First, the Nazis, then the Communists - and then, in 1956, escape to what was, for him, the unimaginable freedom of America. Shakespeare tells us that "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Andy Grove was undoubtedly in the right place at the right time, but it was his own brilliant, incisive mind coupled with tremendous drive and ambition that propelled him to the summit of achievement at Intel. Richard Tedlow tells this fascinating story with verve and wit. In some ways, it is the archetypal tale of the self-made American, but Tedlow never lets us forget that it is also the story of the triumph one amazing man.