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Under Andy Grove's leadership, Intel has
become the world's largest chipmaker, the fifth-most-admired
company in America, and the seventh-most-profitable company
among the Fortune 500. You don't achieve rankings like these
unless you have mastered a rare understanding of the art
of business and an unusual way with its practice.
Few CEOs can claim this level of consistent
record-breaking success. Grove attributes much of this success
to the philosophy and strategy he reveals in Only the
Paranoid Survive -- a book that is unique in leadership
annals for offering a bold new business measure, and for
taking the reader deep inside the workings of a major corporation.
Grove's contribution to business thinking
concerns a new way of measuring the nightmare moment every
leader dreads -- the moment when massive change occurs and
all bets are off. The success you had the day before is
gone, destroyed by unforeseen changes that hit like a stage-six
rapid. Grove calls such moments Strategic Inflection Points,
and he has lived through several. When SIPs hit, all rules
of business shift fast, furiously, and forever. Sips can
be set off by almost anything: mega-competition, an arcane
change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology.
Yet in the watchful leader's hand, Sips
can be an ace. Managed right, a company can turn a SIP into
a positive force to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger
than ever.
To achieve that level of mastery over change,
you must know its properties inside and out. Grove addresses
questions such as these: What are the stages of these tidal
waves? What sources do you turn to in order to foresee dangers
before trouble announces itself? When threats abound, how
do you deal with your emotions, your calendar, your career
-- as well as with your most loyal managers and customers,
who may cling to tradition?
No stranger to risk, Grove examines his
own record of success and failure, including the drama of
how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened
Intel in a major way, and how he is dealing with the SIP
brought on by the Internet. The work of a lifetime of reflection,
Only the Paranoid Survive is a contemporary classic
of leadership skills.
Andrew S. Grove emigrated to the United
States from Hungary in 1956. Grove participated in the founding
of Intel, and became its president in 1979 and chief executive
in 1987. Grove also teaches at the Stanford University Graduate
School of Business.
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