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Only the Paranoid Survive

by Andrew S. Grove

3.9 · Rating Details · 3,559 Ratings · 127 Reviews

Under Andy Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest chip maker and one of the most admired companies in the world. In Only the Paranoid Survive, Grove reveals his strategy of focusing on a new way of measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads--when massive change occurs and a company must, virtually overnight, adapt or fall by the wayside.
Grove call ...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published April 6th 1998 by Profile Business (first published April 1st 1988)

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Community Reviews

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Jan 03, 2014 Saurabh Hooda rated it it was ok

I picked this book because it was referred by Ben Horowitz (http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peace...). Other reason being the book's interesting title which somehow conveyed to me that it must be a book about how Andy Grove was paranoid (in good sense) enough to make Intel an Awesome company.

But as soon as started the book I become disappointed because it's not the book I thought it to be. Its not about Andy Grove being tough CEO or his paranoid decisions. It's is just like any other common busi I picked this book because it was referred by Ben Horowitz (http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peace...). Other reason being the book's interesting title which somehow conveyed to me that it must be a book about how Andy Grove was paranoid (in good sense) enough to make Intel an Awesome company.

But as soon as started the book I become disappointed because it's not the book I thought it to be. Its not about Andy Grove being tough CEO or his paranoid decisions. It's is just like any other common business book written by a High profile CEO.

Book is all about "Strategic Inflection Point" that in simple language means any BIG turn of events in your company (or your industry or technology) like Intel ditched Memory business - the business it started with - and moved to microprocessors business. Book doesn't give any practical tips or secret sauce to handle these big turn of events. Nothing at all. It's more like slog it through, brainstorm with your team, decisions can be tough, you need to take your team with you etc etc. But you would have read all those in 100s of blogs previously.

There are few interesting chunks in the book:
1. CxOs (or senior management team) are always 'last to know' guys. They get bad news very, very late. This is so true, I totally agree to this. Your middle management will filter the info/news before presenting it to you, and nearly all the times they will present data/story in a format so that they look smart, tough, intelligent and proactive. No one wants to tell the bad news.
Create a culture in your team/company so that people are open to you (or their supervisors) without any inhibition of being reprimanded/joked/ignored or given a look like it's above your pay grade dude. Create an open and transparent culture. Be open to healthy arguments, in fact encourage healthy arguments. This culture can't be created in days or months, it will take years but it'll be worth it.

2. People (even competent, highly intelligent, serious-minded people) can come to different set of conclusions about a given set of facts. For ex: IBM and Intel went two different ways on using X-Ray to define feature of a chip. So nothing is Right or Wrong. Iterate and Iterate as fast as you can. Fast iteration is better than slower qualitative iteration.

Another thing that i realized while reading this book is: Why am I reading this book? I am a wannabe entrepreneur and this book is about Billion Dollars Big Critical decisions. It, by no means, immediately benefit me. This 'might' be helpful for senior management guys but for everyone else: just give it a pass. ...more

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Mar 05, 2015 Erwin added it

Shelves: business

Only The Paranoid Survive

Key Quotes:
"The replacement of corporate heads is far more motivated by the need to bring in someone who is not invested in the past than to get somebody who is a better leader or better manager in other ways."
---Andy Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive (p127)

Strategic change doesn't just start at the top, it starts with your calendar. ---(p146)

"Put all of your eggs in one basket, then WATCH THAT BASKET"
--- Mark Twain

Ask yourself:
'Will going to this meeting teach me about t ...more

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Mar 22, 2016 George Jankovic rated it it was amazing

Today Andy Grove died at the age of 79.

His book "Only the Paranoid Survive" talks about his key business philosophy. One should always be on the lookout for new trends or products that might displace or destroy yours. Under him, Intel was famous for cannibilizing their older chips, their cash cows, with the new ones. The competition just couldn't follow their relentless pace.

I recommend the book to everyone in management or business whether in high-tech or not.

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Oct 11, 2014 Tirath rated it really liked it

I had heard so much about this book being a classic, and I finally read it.
Whats lovely is that it was written in 1996, and he lays out the principles of how to prepare for, deal with and manage change - especially when it comes to a change in how the business works...
When industries/ structures/ networks change - it can ruin organisations or catapult them to dominant positions. It is also a signal to either scale up in that direction or retreat completely out of the current one.

It's also a bril ...more

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Dec 17, 2014 Gabriel Pinkus rated it really liked it

Great insights from a successful leaders of a successful company in a rapidly changing market.

I think this is a great book leaders of corporations should read, especially with how to view changes in the marketplace and how to benefit from employees seeing them before you do.

A few things I took away that I'll never forget:

1. As CEO, you are the last person to see external changes that affect your company. Lower level people detect the winds of change before you do, because they're out in the fie ...more

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Jan 29, 2011 David rated it liked it

This book discusses some really important ideas, primarily the "10x forces" that fundamentally change businesses and the "strategic inflection points" during which an industry is transformed by these "10x forces" (yes, he quotes that term everywhere it appears in the book). Grove explores these ideas using his experience as CEO during Intel's switch from making memories to making microprocessors in the late 80's as the primary example, but he emphasizes that these ideas are not unique to the tec This book discusses some really important ideas, primarily the "10x forces" that fundamentally change businesses and the "strategic inflection points" during which an industry is transformed by these "10x forces" (yes, he quotes that term everywhere it appears in the book). Grove explores these ideas using his experience as CEO during Intel's switch from making memories to making microprocessors in the late 80's as the primary example, but he emphasizes that these ideas are not unique to the tech industry and also explores SIPs in other industries ranging from sound in the movie industry to Wal-Mart in retail. After explaining these concepts and pointing to that range of examples, the author spends most of the book discussing how to manage companies during these crises: how to know that you're in the middle of a SIP, how to separate signal from noise during that confusing period, and the importance of fostering healthy debate but subsequently projecting decisive leadership.

The material covered in this book is important for anyone in business, and I mostly agreed with the author's high-level ideas but I was disappointed by the book itself. The case study of Intel was fascinating, especially hearing it told from the man in charge at the time. But much of the advice was either obvious or overly simplistic. For an obvious example, take the idea of listening to what your sales people and individual contributors on the ground are telling you about how their jobs are changing. This seems like something managers should *always* be doing. It could be one of those things that sounds obvious when you say it but isn't something you think about when you're in that position. Or maybe I'm unusually aware of these ideas because the book is 15 years old now or because I've been lucky to work for engineering-driven companies that were well aware of these ideas (and socialized them). Quite likely the approach just didn't resonate with me because the book is targeted at middle and senior managers, not individual contributors.

The "Reign in Chaos" chapter that describes setting strong direction after a period of open debate had some particularly condescending passages. On page 145 Grove counsels managers that "admitting that you need to learn something new is always difficult. It is even harder if you are a senior manager who is accustomed to the automatic deference which people accord you owning to your position. But if you don't fight it, that very deference may become a wall that isolates you from learning new things. It all takes self-discipline." That's right, it's tough as a senior manager to avoid completely ignoring the ideas of your subordinates, but you can do it with a little bit of self-discipline. Next time one of your reports has something to say and you just want to send them back to the salt mine, consider listening instead.

On page 163 there's the story of a "very competent" senior manager at Intel who had some great ideas but according to Grove just went about them poorly. He "organized a committee...to investigate an issue and come up with a recommendation. It turned out that this manager knew all along what he wanted to do, but instead of giving that direction to the committee, which he could have, he was hoping to engineer a bottom-up decision to the same effect. When the committee came up with the opposite recommendation, he felt cornered. At this late stage, he tried to dictate his solution to people who by now had spent months struggling with an issue and had firmed up their minds. It just couldn't be done. Coming as it did at this late stage, his dictate seemed utterly arbitrary." Yes, telling a committee of your reports that the results of their lengthy discussions are all wrong and you're going to do the opposite because you think it's better just _seems_ arbitrary. And I guess the lesson to managers is: don't ask your reports to think about what to do because they'll just come up with the wrong answer and be angry when you set them straight.

Despite these parts and the overall lackluster presentation, these ideas _are_ pretty important and the author's obviously considered them a lot. One last thing: the book's a bit old now (written in 1996) and predates things like the Internet's explosive growth, but to the author's credit in several cases he accurately forecast industry-transforming changes including the Internet's disruption of the travel booking industry and the difficulty that faces music, movie, and software companies in a world where people can download media through the Internet. The last chapter covers "The Internet" entirely and basically asks: "fad or the biggest innovation of the century" -- he comes down on the right side, but with our hindsight it makes for some interesting reading. ...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Preston Williams rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Good book. This book was written in 1996, and like anything has started to show its age. The basic messages/ themes still ring true. Although it is funny to read about Apple and Steve Jobs and how they were basically regarded as being left for dead. Now of course, Jobs came back strong and have higher market capitalization than Microsoft. So, I guess the lesson is that this book is good, but you have to still take it with a grain of salt and put it in perspective.
My favorite part was when he ...more

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Feb 03, 2016 Christopher Lewis Kozoriz rated it liked it

Shelves: books-by-billionaires, autobiographies

We must discipline ourselves to overcome our tendency to do too little too late. ~ Andrew S. Grove

This book is all about Strategic Inflection Points in a business and how to survive and thrive while you are going through one.

Andrew S. Grove shares his personal experiences he faced with the Intel Corporation while they got out of memory chips and began to shift their focus exclusively to microprocessors.

The management guru, Peter Drucker, recommends this book and states, "This terrific book is a ...more

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Apr 16, 2015 John rated it really liked it

Surprisingly readable book about what it's like to be at a company at the moment when it has to either change the way it operates or go into a decline.

That said, I wish I were not the kind of person who now reads business books for fun.

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Jul 26, 2016 Antony Mayfield rated it it was amazing

This book is a business classic that everyone with an interest in organisations, commerce or leadership should read.

Twenty years after it was written, Only The Paranoid Survive is still a thrill to read - the insights as fresh, compelling and useful to leaders and managers as they ever were.

There are parts of the book which one might think we're out of date, dealing as they do with Grove's speculation about whether the Internet will be a big deal - he thinks it will - or the future of Steve Job ...more

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Jun 07, 2016 Adam Yoshida rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Still Relevant

At first I was slightly disappointed by this book. I bought it without reading the description and was expecting more of a general history of Intel. But then I kept reading. Instead of the history that I was seeking I found a worthwhile book on strategic leadership.

The principles that Groves propounds here remain relevant and sound nearly twenty years later. Indeed, his description of how companies can and should respond to strategic inflection points is perhaps even more relevant ...more

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May 07, 2016 Frank Stein rated it liked it · review of another edition

Of course some of this book about the technology industry circa 1996 can seem a little dated. Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, tells his readers that email is a better way to communicate with employees that closed-circuit televisions, and that the internet has all the makings of a "strategic inflection point" technology that will up-end the computer industry. Check two points for Andy, but that ship has long sailed. Grove also hammers home such business-speak bromides as "inflection points" Of course some of this book about the technology industry circa 1996 can seem a little dated. Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, tells his readers that email is a better way to communicate with employees that closed-circuit televisions, and that the internet has all the makings of a "strategic inflection point" technology that will up-end the computer industry. Check two points for Andy, but that ship has long sailed. Grove also hammers home such business-speak bromides as "inflection points" and the success of "horizontal" over "vertical" companies. He may have pioneered these ideas, but they too are already part of the atmosphere.

At its best, however, this book provides a window into the emotional and intellectual turmoil of piloting a multi-billion dollar company through a turbulent industry. The heart of the book is Intel's decision to change from a company that made mainly memory-chips to one that dropped them entirely and made mainly microprocessors after 1984, when Intel had already lost most of the memory-chip business to cheap Japanese producers. Grove described the "holy war" that broke out in the company as it tried to restructure, how subordinates and staffed tried to evade or disobey orders, how friendships were broken up. He saw his task as keeping the company's new vision together through this "valley of death," and he succeeded, with the company becoming stronger than ever.

Grove points out that often these restructuring decisions are difficult because they are so emotional. So much of employees' identities, including that of the CEO, are wrapped up in an idea of what they have done, and of past successes, that it's hard to change direction. Yet he shows that people in the lower realms of the company, middle managers or salespeople, already tend to notice the shifting of trends before the top-level management, and therefore are the best allies in finally changing direction. "What took you so long?" asked one of his customers after Intel finally abandoned memory chips. To someone tied up in the management of Intel, the decision seemed wrenching, but to outsiders it was obvious. Grove thus advocates keeping in touch with "front-line" employees and customers to see where the company is already moving, and keeping attuned to the possibilities of drastic changes in the industry. Only then can a CEO be emotionally and tactically prepared to shift resources when the necessity comes. This book makes the argument that self-awareness is as important a virtue as technical smarts even in the technology world. ...more

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Jun 25, 2015 Liam rated it really liked it

"I'm often credited with the motto, 'Only the paranoid survive.' I have no idea when I first said this, but the fact remains that, when it comes to business, I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction." (3)

"Our mood was downbeat. I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon and I asked, 'If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you ...more

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Aug 06, 2014 José Antonio Lopez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Andy Grove published this book in 1996, a year before Clayton Christensen's "The Innovators Dilemma". Reading Grove is a description of what it meant to be inside an Strategic Inflection Point (Disruptions) and survive. His advice for entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals is as current as it was almost 20 years ago.

Another gold mint in the book is Grove's vision of the future. Now that the future was revealed we can appreceate how Intel leadership prepare and succeed. 20 yrs ago lots of pe ...more

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Jul 13, 2016 Kevin rated it liked it

This book had some decent concepts. I thought the addition of a 6th (Complementary) force to the traditional Porter's Fiver Forces was very apt and insightful. The book is dated; however, so there is no need to read through fully cover to cover. I think the question, "Is the internet that big a deal? Or is it an overhyped fad?" has been fully put to bed...

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Aug 19, 2015 Sam rated it really liked it

Using Porter's framework for Industry analysis and his personal experience at Intel, Andy Grove gives the reader a crystal-clear understanding of the immense benefits of not allowing crises moments go waste. Depending on the management tact deployed to tackle them, crises could in fact be opportunities, and in well managed situations, the bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity.
Though situations that precipitate a Strategic Inflection Point (SIP) may be beyond the internal dynamics of the ...more

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Jul 28, 2016 Lech Kaniuk rated it it was amazing

A absolute must read for every serious entrepreneur. I wish to become as good leader and entrepreneur as he was.

This book does not only touch a very interesting topic that mean life or death for enterprises, but adding the fact that the book was written in the nineties - it's very interesting to see a world class CEOs view on the potential changes Internet will bring - from our perspective in the year 2016.

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Jan 25, 2016 Sujata Sahni added it · review of another edition

Andy Grove was one of the founders of Intel and later became the CEO before he moved to the US to start teaching at the Stanford University.

When a change in how some elements of one's business are conducted become an order of magnitude larger than what the business is accustomed to, then all bets are off. There's wind and then there's a typhoon, there are waves and then there is a tsunami. There are competitive forces and then there are super competitive forces. Such a large change in one of th ...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Khalid Almoghrabi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Andy is a shrewd leader who took Intel company from a fail to become a success story all over the world. besides chronological events he shows how a company sooner or later will suffer in a turmoil and only the paranoid and surfing against the waves, inflection points, would help out.
This book is a strategy-focused and would benefit any person with needed leadership skills.

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Jan 10, 2015 Brad Felix rated it really liked it

Andy Grove (ex-Intel CEO) is an effective, take-charge leader, which is exactly what is needed when firms encounter a strategic inflection point. These periods of time are hit by all companies and the result is binary - they either rise to the occasion and elevate the business to a new level or it marks the high water mark for the firm's success.

My biggest takeaways from the book reflect how an organization can die when they hit these sticking points. Similar to Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Thi Andy Grove (ex-Intel CEO) is an effective, take-charge leader, which is exactly what is needed when firms encounter a strategic inflection point. These periods of time are hit by all companies and the result is binary - they either rise to the occasion and elevate the business to a new level or it marks the high water mark for the firm's success.

My biggest takeaways from the book reflect how an organization can die when they hit these sticking points. Similar to Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, the message is clear: no one has the answer. But, during times of crisis or unique industry change, the firm has a finite window of time where the leadership must analyze the information, make the best decision possible, then move as decisively as possible in that direction. If your leader can't make decisions or doesn't have the balls to lead the team in one direction (even when they are fully aware they could be wrong), then the business will most certainly die. Similarly, if they wait too long and ultimately make the right decision, the business may still die as the decision came too late. It's an honest and frank assessment of the job of the CEO/leadership team - you are paid to make decisions even when you are scared or unsure about the future. And, the fate of everyone in your organization depends on it. Here are some select quotes from the text illustrating these points:

"The point is this: how can you hope to mobilize a large team of employees to pull together, accept new and different job assignments, work in an uncertain environment and work hard despite the uncertainty of their future, if the leader of the company can't or won't articulate the shape of the other side of the valley?" (note: the author refers to navigating a strategic inflection point as analogous to walking through the valley of death)

"Lots of aspects of managing an organization through a strategic inflection point petrify the participants, senior management included. But inaction might lead to a bad result for your business and that should frighten you more than anything else." ...more

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Mar 04, 2015 Ami Iida rated it really liked it

Shelves: ict

It is the best one book to decipher the history of Intel.

This is the autobiography of founder.

This book's theme is twofold.
One is the innovation of micro Professor.

And one is a strategy to sell it.
This book focuses on the latter.

This is a great book to decipher the strategy.
Of course Moore's Law in the semiconductor has also been described. ...more

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Oct 05, 2014 Kunal rated it really liked it

"Nobody owes you a career. Your career is your business."

This is still quite a classic book, twenty years after it was written. Grove delves deep into strategic inflection points, and asks you to look at these -- both for yourself and your company. Because after all, as in every business, you will be staring down a Minsky Moment, and what you do next determines the course of your future.

The last chapter, written in 1996, on the emergence of the Internet is quite a gem -- you can see in it, the f ...more

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Aug 23, 2016 Waterxpolo rated it it was amazing

Although reading a book on business strategy and management never makes one an expert or qualified, this book provides vocabulary, a framework, and concrete examples to compare against one's own, and can help reinforce intuition and abilities that have worked in the past for managers. The whole book revolves around identifying major forces of change and how to respond to them, arguably one of the most critical roles of senior managers.

For non-managers, this book may be less useful, outside of h ...more

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Jul 03, 2016 Dmitry Manayev rated it it was amazing

This book simply puts importance to follow the trends and recognize the noise and life changing inventions. With speed of tech world evolution it is hard to keep your business without changing in time. Your legacy business can be kicked out by more innovative competitors, who will pick up the right trends at right time and will make your work obsolete. It describes techniques which you can use as a founder or chief executive in the company to keep your business up in fast changing the world.

And ...more

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May 19, 2014 Andy rated it liked it

Shelves: business

-Nobody owes you a career. Your career is your business.
-The competitive well-being of a company can be measured by:
1)The power and competence of a company's competitors
2)The power and competence of a company's suppliers
3)The power and competence of a company's customers
4)The power and competence of a company's potential customers
5)The possibility that your product or service can be delivered in a different way
6)The force of complementors
-"Don't differentiate without a difference"
-When opportuni ...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Patrick T rated it liked it · review of another edition

Stopped at page 155 after the pace slowed and it became a little redundant.

What I learned:

* Middle Managers serve a purpose: "Simply by doing their daily work, these middle managers were adjusting Intel's strategic posture. By the time we [senior management:] made the decision to exit the memory business, only one out of eight silicon fabrication plants was producing memories. The exit decision had less drastic consequences as a result of the actions of our middle managers."

* Ask these questions

Stopped at page 155 after the pace slowed and it became a little redundant.

What I learned:

* Middle Managers serve a purpose: "Simply by doing their daily work, these middle managers were adjusting Intel's strategic posture. By the time we [senior management:] made the decision to exit the memory business, only one out of eight silicon fabrication plants was producing memories. The exit decision had less drastic consequences as a result of the actions of our middle managers."

* Ask these questions to distinguish signal from noise to identify a strategic inflection point: "Is your key competitor [the one you'd shoot with a silver bullet:] about to change?" / "Is your key complementor about to change?" / "Do people seem to be losing it around you?" - And when the answers start to change radically or evoke different answer from your management and staff you may be headed for a strategic inflection point.

* "You don't have to seek these Cassandra's [predictors of ill winds coming:] out; if you are in management, they will find you. Like somebody who sells a product that he is passionate about, they will 'sell' their concerns to you with a passion."

* "Peter Drucker quotes someone as an entrepreneur who moves resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. That's what a properly motivated middle manager will do with resources under his or her command."

* "Helpful Cassandra's are quick to notice the first sign of '10X' forces but those signs are often mixed in with symptoms of forces that might appear to be '10X' but aren't. ... You can' judge the significance of strategic inflection points by the quality of the first version [Lisa, Apple's Newton:]. You need to draw on your experience. ... let your imagination flow a bit ... [what would be your reaction if this early version were 10X better?:] ... As you consider this your answer might be that even if it were '10X' better it wouldn't interest you as a consumer. Even if a company actually supplied it, it wouldn't change teh silver bullet test and it wouldn't rearrange your complementors. Life would go on as before ... But if your instincts suggest that '10x' improvement could make this capability exciting or threatening, you may very well be looking at what is going to be a strategic inflection point."

...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Ilya rated it liked it

Shelves: engineering

Andrew Grove was one of the cofounders of Intel Corp., and its CEO in 1987-1998. In this position, he made several right decisions. One was to divest the company of its memory business and concentrate on microprocessors: it couldn't compete with Japanese memory chip manufacturers anyway. When the Pentium floating-point division bug was discovered, the bad publicity prompted Intel to offer to exchange the processor to any end consumer; this offer cost the company half a billion dollars, but it re ...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Omar Halabieh rated it really liked it

Below are excerpts from the book that summarize the key points presented by the author:

1- "Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people's attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management."

2- "We all need Below are excerpts from the book that summarize the key points presented by the author:

1- "Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people's attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management."

2- "We all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past. We need to expose ourselves to lower-level employees, who, when encouraged, will tell us a lot that we need to know. We must invite comments even from people whose job it is to constantly evaluate us and critique us, such as journalist and members of the financial community. Turn the tables and ask them some questions: about competitors, trends in the industry and what they think we should be most concerned with. As we throw ourselves into raw action, our senses and instincts will rapidly be honed again."

3- "A strategic inflection point is when the balance of forces shifts from the old structure, from the old ways of doing business and the old ways of competing, to the new. Before the strategic inflection point, the industry simply was more like the old. After it, it is more like the new. It is a point where the curve has subtly but profoundly changed, never to change back again."

4- "Of all the changes in the forces of competition, the most difficult one to deal with is when one of the forces become so strong that it transforms the very essence of how business is conducted in an industry."

5- "When an industry goes through a strategic inflection point, the practitioners of the old art may have trouble. On the other hand, the new landscape provides an opportunity for people, some of whom may not even be participants in the industry in question, to join and become part of the action."

6- "When a strategic infection point sweeps through the industry, the more successful a participant was in the old industry structure, the more threatened it is by change and the more reluctant it is to adapt to it. Second, whereas the cost to enter a given industry in the face of well-entrenched participants can be very high, when the structure breaks, the cost to enter may become trivially small."

7- "I suspect that the people coming in are probably no better managers or leaders than the people they are replacing. they have only one advantage...the new managers come unencumbered by such emotional involvement and therefore are capable of applying an impersonal logic to the situation."

8- "As these questions to attempt to distinguish signal from noise: 1) Is your key competitor about to change? 2) Is your key complementor about to change? 3) Do people seem to be "losing it" around you?"

9- "I call the divergence between actions and statements strategic dissonance. It is one of the surest indications that a company is struggling with a strategic inflection point."

10- "Ideally, the fear of a new environment sneaking up on us should keep us on our toes. Our sense of urgency should be aided by our judgement, instincts and observations that have been honed by decades spent in the business world. The fact is, because of our experience, very often we managers know that we need to do something. We even know what we should be doing. But we don't trust our instincts or don't act on them early enough to take advantage of the benign business bubble. We must discipline ourselves to overcome our tendency to do too little too late." ...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Upom rated it liked it

Shelves: productivity, business, strategy, advice, technology, computer, internet, intel, nonfiction

An interesting and concise book about "strategic inflection points", points at which the fundamentals of a business change dramatically due to 10x forces. Grove recounts his experiences at Intel when the company underwent a strategic inflection point due to the Japanese entering the memory chip market . Grove provides practical advice on how to identify strategic inflection points, how to deal with them in the short-term and the long-term. Grove's method can be summarized with the following step ...more

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Aug 23, 2013 Vince rated it really liked it

Finally caught up with this classic. I enjoyed the book from two angles:
1) As insight into a mind who led a company (Intel) through tremendous growth
2) As a history of the period (one I well remember) told by an insider

The book rewarded both angles. Grove's theory of Strategic Inflection points, how to identify them, how to respond is worth considering. He offers a concise and useful summary and expansion on Porter's Five Forces. He offers interesting commentary on the Pentium Floating Point err ...more

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About Andrew S. Grove

Andrew Stephen ("Andy") Grove (born 2 September 1936), is a Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author. He is a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the United States where he finished his education. He later became CEO of Intel Corporation and helped transform the company into the world's largest m ...more

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