Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company

by Tim Jackson

Named a Best Business Book by Business Week, Inside Intel is the gripping business saga of a company that rose to dominance through technological innovation, and maintained its leadership against competitors through aggressive marketing, tough business tactics, and liberal use of legal firepower.

In his in-depth portrait of Intel, the first history/expose of the company, former   Financial Times columnist Tim Jackson reveals that Intel's corporate culture is determinedly secretive and authoritarian, and the company retains its own force of private investigators to prevent its employees from going astray. Intel routinely uses the threat of lawsuits against workers and rivals.

At the center of this story is Andy Grove, Intel's high-profile CEO and chairman, once a penniless immigrant who waited tables to put himself through college. It is Grove who has made the unpopular decisions which have kept Intel at the top of the chip market. Exhaustively researched from court records, unpublished documents, and interviews with Intel's competitors, partners, and past and present employees, Jackson traces the company's spectacular failures and successes, as well as the powerful human struggles that have made Intel one of the most competitive players in a high-stakes game.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Technology, Biography, History, Computers, Leadership

432 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Tim Jackson is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). CUSP is a multidisciplinary research centre which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Its guiding vision for prosperity is one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet.

Reviews

[Cryo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was the guy who named the Intel products after cartoon characters that pissed off management.

Intel SatisFAXtion 200 (which didn't get released) was named "Ren" internally, and the 400 was named "Stimpy".

[Thor]

Yet another Civil War tale. No, wait! It's a war between Intel and AMD. And the story of Andy Grove, the tough, abrasive, and often wrong-headed manager at Intel. In "None but the Paranoid Survive", Grove states that the defining moment for Intel was when they decided to give up on memory chips and go with processors. How hard was a decision like that? It didn't really require paranoia. I mean, practically the entire Far East making memory chips and selling them at near cost, versus a monoply or near-monoply in processors.

What happened - first there was William Shockley, the nutty inventor of the transistor. Nobody wanted to work for him, so they tiptoed out and founded Fairchild. But this somehow turned out to be a company run by accountants who had zero vision when it came to technology. So, they ran away from there, too, and Intel was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

This time, it was all high-tech, and not bean counting. The operative method for Intel was to hire the very best people, many of whom are described in the book, and the rest is a great success story. It's also interesting to see how Intel used lawsuits as a competitive technique.

[Victorm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book. It's well written (a lot of "short stories" and personal cases) and easy to understand even if you don't know much about processors, chips or informatics. It helps us to know how the Intel empire has been created, its philosophy and its culture and also how things might be into a great company. Management and computer lovers will find it really good.

[Carlos O'Donell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the rise of a massive company, how its management shaped that company (often in crazy ways), and how inflection points in an industry require gambling one way or another. If you choose the right path you stand to grow the company and make a lot of money.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't think I would like to work for them. Don't like the way they treated Jerry Saunders and AMD. Creepy and very corporate, even if they were responsible for Moore's Law.

[Vishnu Ajit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biography of Andy Grove. It was more like the story of Intel and the hurdles and successes it had to face since 1969.
But, one thing that was really missing out was. This book was written in 1997. So, what has happened to Intel in the last 24 years was missing. So, when the book ended with Pentium MMX processor launch being successful, I really felt a missing out. I actually seriously started my computer journey at Pentium II and then the journey to Pentium III and then Core2Duo and Dual Core processors like Intel i3, i5, i7 and i9 where all missing. I seriously had wanted to know about that story.
Anyway can't complain about that.
It was seriously a good read. Since I like reading biographies of companies/people who made huge business fortunes, I loved reading the book.
I would give it surely a 7.5/10

[Wen Jun Ong · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers a big part of the history of Intel. History of Intel = History of semiconductor and the born of Silicon Valley. Hence, it will be interesting for those working in semiconductor industry, I am not, so I couldn't bring myself to finish the book.

TLDR : Not for me. Only 50% read.

[Brendan Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the history of Intel I expected with very little mention of Gordon Moore and even less of Robert Noyce. The title is a misnomer as the author had very little access inside Intel, as Andy Grove cut him off. First half Ok but petered out in second half and bit of a chore to finish in the end.

[Viplav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening revelation on Intel, its smart staff, sneakiest business tactics, and litigiousness not just for other chip manufacturers, but also on its own staff.

[Magdalena Trivina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seperti judulnya, buku ini menulis tentang teknologi dan orang-orang yang mengembangkannya di masa-masa awal intel. Baca buku ini pertama kali karena eneg, kenapa sih kalau baca referensi paper untuk research, nama intel selalu dituankan? Apa hebatnya sih perusahaan ini? Dan saya tersentak keras seiring membaca isi buku ini. Bagaimana seseorang (Andy Grove) bisa begitu meletakkan usaha menuju kesempurnaan sebagai prioritas, sampai terkadang terlihat seperti obsesi. Ada juga glimpse tentang seperti apa Gordon Moore dan Robert Noyce itu, dan banyak nama orang-orang yang bekerja di tahun-tahun awal intel yang mungkin less-famous, tapi setiap orang punya kontribusi masing-masing, and it's cool, and sometimes aggresive enough to scare you. Buku ini membantu saya untuk pengenalan awal tentang intel dan sejarah integrated circuit.

[Manuel Laphroaig · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the start of the microprocessor and semi conductor industry from the perspective of Intel. Some parts made me queasy, especially Intel's apparent enjoyment of holding companies back or harassing people in court, but a great read nonetheless. Will be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys reading about the history of the tech industry.

[Alain van Hoof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Printed version. Very nice read about the rise of Intel, not very technical but still interesting: While nowadays everybody is talking about Agile and DevOps, that is was intel did its first years as a startup late 60's. Later it became just an other big company, and forgot about it.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most fascinating to see the amazing behind the scenes of the computer industry. Very captivating reading too

[Faizal Aziz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andy Groove, salah seorang co-founder yang memulakan empayar Intel. Buku ini juga menceritakan kilang Intel dan kisah-kisah kelemahan pentadbiran bisnes di Malaysia tahun 70-an.

[Alanmoorenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dirty truth!

[Lori Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A should-read company profile for knowledge workers, managers, directors, C-levels, and entrepreneurs.