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Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American
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Sales rank 344,162
Customers rating (based on 15 reviews)
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Andy Grove survived both the Nazis and the Communists to become the quintessential American capitalist. Even more important, he is the best role model we have for doing business in the twenty-first century. Any short list of the world's most admired business people would include Andy Grove, the chairman and CEO of Intel in its years of explosive growth. During his career, Intel became the model for Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley became the model for the world. And Grove became Time's Man of the Year-an icon of the promise of the American life. The simple facts of Grove's career are the stuff of legend. Born in Hungary of Jewish origin in 1936, he survived the Holocaust only to face the Soviet invasion. He escaped to New York, penniless, at age twenty, and embraced America, transforming himself from Andr‡s Istv‡n Gr—f into Andrew Stephen Grove. After putting himself through college and graduate school, he arrived in Silicon Valley at the perfect time for an ambitious young engineer. He joined Intel at its founding in 1968, rose to CEO in 1987, then led the company into the stratosphere, with compound annual profit growth at 34 percent for the next eleven years. Despite decades of media scrutiny and six of Grove's own books, there remains a powerful element of mystery about him. This definitive biography, by a Harvard Business School professor with unprecedented access, finally cracks the code of who Andy Grove really is, how his mind works, how he attacks impossible problems, and how he leads others to exceed their own expectations of themselves. After extensive and meticulous research, Richard S. Tedlow has produced the most complete picture ever of this fascinating, colorful, often brilliant but sometimes maddening business genius. The most consistent and important theme of Grove's life is how he responds to change: boldly, quickly, with every scrap of his intelligence but no respect for conventional wisdom. As Tedlow observes, "Grove has escaped natural selection by doing the evolving himself. Forcibly adapting himself to a succession of new realities, he has left a trail of discarded assumptions in his wake. When reality has changed, he has found a way to let go and embrace the new." Some of the insights in Andy Grove include: * How Grove's traumatic youth shaped both his personality and his approach to business and led to his signature phrase-"Only the Paranoid Survive." * How he studied human dynamics and taught himself to become a great manager, developing such formulations as "strategic inflection point," "knowledge power trumps position power," "constructive confrontation," and others. * How his complex relationships evolved with the legendary cofounders of Intel, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce. * Why he stumbled during the Pentium crisis of 1994, and how he parlayed it into a reinvigorated concept of ingredient branding ("Intel Inside"). Tedlow, an acclaimed business historian, interviewed dozens of people and examined mountains of documents, with Grove's total cooperation. Yet Grove exercised no editorial control and did not see even one page of the manuscript. This is an unauthorized biography that uniquely illuminates Grove's life, Intel's history, and the rise of Silicon Valley.
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| Publisher | Portfolio Hardcover | | Release date | 11/2006 | | Availability | | | Edition | Hardcover |
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 Great overview of a business leader with a slight bias
Richard Tedlow produces a very interesting, although slanted, biography of Andy Grove. While many things have been written about Grove including several autobiographies this is one of the more thorough accounts of his life in a single volume. It covers the early years very well and puts the reader with Grove as he is fleeing Hungary from the Soviets and immigrating to America. His rise as a street smart engineer from City College to CEO of a major company is covered in detail. The semiconductor industry is one of the more fascinating industries to study and its development was dependant on the scientific research and development end of the semiconductor companies, but also the development of the personal computer research. The 800 pound gorilla in that game was none other than Big Blue IBM and when IBM selected Intel's processor the market was corned. As with Microsoft, Intel had to engage in direct consumer marketing to keep the public demanding the latest chip in IBM and competitors computers. Overall it is a great chronicle of how Intel grew as a company and what led them to predominance in the industry.
The only major complaint is that this book is incredibly pro Andy Grove to the point that Grove can do no wrong. While there is little doubting that Tim Jackson's account treats Grove very harshly I feel that both books need to be read in order to have a balanced viewpoint of Grove's effect on the company as with many things the truth lies in the middle. Despite this I still recommend and find it an enjoyable way to learn about a fascinating man and company.
 Great story, mediocre story teller
Andy Grove is as great an example of the American dream as you will ever get. As if surviving the Holocaust weren't enough, Andy also experienced first-hand the brutality of the Soviet invasion in his country of birth, Hungary and still came out alive at the end of it all. Not surprisingly, he made his escape soon thereafter from Hungary and landed in the promised land, the United States of America, a beacon of hope for many and sundry. And once he did arrive in the U.S., Andy never had to look back. Even though he has had his share of hard times, not least of which were his battles with prostrate cancer and Parkinson's disease, the fact is that his innate brilliance, hard work and commitment made it possible for him to succeed spectacularly in a land which valued those qualities more than Hungary ever did.
As a story therefore it is certainly hugely inspiring. However where this book falls short, in my opinion, is the manner in which this story has been narrated. First of all, it stands at 461 pages long! While I understand that a book describing the life and times of Andy Grove cannot be a quick read of 100 odd pages, it is inexcusable that the author takes as many pages as he does in narrating the Andy Grove story. What makes the lack of brevity frustrating is that it stems in part from his frequent digressions. It almost seems as though the author, Richard Tedlow wants to impress us with his erudition. Finally, the author's tone switches between the subjective and passionate to objective and dispassionate at a moment's notice and I find some of those transitions less than graceful. Thus at the end of it, when I ask myself the question I always do after watching a movie, "Did the director of the movie (or author in this case) help me empathize with the main character?", I find answering myself in the negative.
To sum up, Andy Grove's story is an intriguing and inspiring story. But I would rather have it told by someone other than Dr. Tedlow who inspite of taking us through 461 pages, fails in my opinion to help us understand how Andy Grove thinks (a task he had outlined for himself on the very first page of the book) but most importantly, how he feels.
The early years are the best
Anyone interested in reading about Andy Grove probably already knows he is far from your typical American business executive. Maybe it's the risky flight from Hungary as a penniless emigrant. Maybe it's his self-made success turning into a highly visible leader in a dynamic industry built from scratch. Maybe it's his own writings. Maybe it's all of those, and more.
Tedlow covers the whole story in detail, and the book moves most crisply in the recounting of Grove's youth, and his time in America from his fortunate arrival to the first few years at Intel. Grove's personal history and the birth of the semiconductor and PC industries are simply too fascinating to ignore, especially for other technologists who were around at the time.
This bio is no hagiography. Grove is praised repeatedly and at length for his hard work, focus, and brilliant leadership, which he richly deserves. There is simply no way a reader would conclude, "Now, why is this guy famous?" Tedlow still calls him out for mistakes and also lets Grove point the finger at himself plenty of times. You can't learn enough about a figure such as Grove just by hitting the highlights. Besides, the bad news makes for some of the best stories. Maybe this is a bit like baseball, where a guy who hits .350 for a career is a lock for the Hall of Fame.
I felt the coverage of Grove's mature years and the 1980s-90s at Intel was inconsistently told. Sometimes we had a good explanation of what Grove was thinking and why he and Intel did what they did, or didn't do something else. In other cases, barely a word was said. For example, how exactly did Grove and his executive team decide to get in and out of various diversifications, most of which failed? How did Grove go about managing through some downturns, other than by lopping off large numbers of people?
I could do without some of the author's unnecessary asides, such as a reference to "Reagan's mindless happy talk." What's the point, unless Andy Grove said it?
Please consider reading Andy Grove's own books, especially "Swimming Across". Grove is an excellent writer himself, with a lot to say, as anyone reading his bio can certainly appreciate. Tedlow was blessed to have Grove's own extensive notebooks as a source.
Enjoyable but Disappointing
Being an immigrant myself, I always regard Andy as one of the most admirable models. In fact, that was the main reason that I enjoyed reading this book, from cover to cover. However, after finishing it, I've found that I have been left with repeated scorecards of Intel's business performance but not enough descriptions and portraits about Andy himself, about his personality, how he articulated his ideas, how he got work done, and what he actually did. I've found cases that the author just gave blank statements about Andy without explanations or examples. For example, what arguments did Andy bring up that made him from being denied to being allowed to enter US, or simply by playing tough? How did he persuade a quiting key employee to change his mind, or simply by offering more money? What was the case that Andy won an argument even he knew he was wrong? and so on. You'll notice those emptiness when you read them. I think the book would have been much better in help readers understand Andy if the author could have dug a bit deeper in presenting him. Overall, this is a decent book, just not satisfying my curiosity much.
Readable, detailed bio of Intel's leader
"Americans don't know how lucky they are," a young immigrant named Andy Grove told The New York Times in 1960 after graduating first in his engineering class. "Friends told me all that I needed was ability." This wonderful book describes how the able and autodidactic Andy Grove went from penurious refugee to prince of Silicon Valley. Richard S. Tedlow, a historian who teaches at Harvard Business School, neither lionizes nor lambastes Grove. Instead, he provides gigabytes of facts about one of the twentieth century's most demanding and successful technology leaders. While it is sometimes a bit too detailed, we think this book is a treat for anyone interested in leadership, management, economic history or technology. No rags-to-riches story could have a better protagonist than profane, irascible, brilliant Andy Grove.
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