Intel’s dilemma could have been easily diagnosed by the Harvard professor who’d advised Andy Grove. Everyone at Intel knew Clayton Christensen and his concept of “the innovator’s dilemma.” However, the company’s PC processor business looked likely to print money for a very long time. Unlike in the 1980s, when Grove reoriented Intel away from DRAM at a time when the company was bleeding money, in the 1990s and 2000s, Intel was one of America’s most profitable firms. The problem wasn’t that no one realized Intel ought to consider new products, but that the status quo was simply too profitable.
