Only the Paranoid Survive

by Andrew S. Grove

Your career is literally your business.

price for what the market will bear, price for volume, then work like the devil on your costs so that you can make money at that price. This will lead you to achieve economies of scale

cost-based pricing will often lead you into a niche position,

We became highly focused on tangible results (our word for it is “output”). And from all the early bickering, we developed a style of ferociously arguing with one another while remaining friends (we call this “constructive confrontation”).

We tried to focus on a niche of the memory market segment, we tried to invent special-purpose memories called value-added designs, we introduced more advanced technologies and built memories with them. What we were desperately trying to do was to earn a premium for our product

we worked hard without a clear notion of how things were ever going to get better.

People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.

I learned that the word “point” in strategic inflection point is something of a misnomer. It’s not a point; it’s a long, torturous

struggle.

looking for a niche that couldn’t possibly exist in a commodity market, we

you can’t judge the significance of strategic inflection points by the quality of the first version.

Don’t sit on the sidelines waiting for the senior people to make a decision

Don’t justify holding back by saying that you don’t know the answers; at times like this, nobody does. Give your most considered opinion and give it clearly and forcefully;

Well-informed and well-intentioned people will look at the same picture and assign dramatically different interpretations to it. So it is extraordinarily important to bring the intellectual power of all relevant parties to this sharpening process.

worked very hard to break down the walls between those who possess knowledge power and those who possess organization power.

With all the rhetoric about how management is about change, the fact is that we managers loathe change, especially when it involves us.

Loosen up the level of control that your organization normally is accustomed to. Let people try different techniques, review different products, exploit different sales channels and go after different

customers.

Looking back over my own career, I have never made a tough change, whether it involved resource shifts or personnel moves, that I haven’t wished I had made a year or so earlier.

danger of catering to the desire of every manager to be included in the simple description of the refocused business, therefore making that description so lofty and so inclusive as to be meaningless.

If you’ve been very successful in your career, the inertia of success may keep you from recognizing danger.

At times like this, looking back may be tempting, but it’s terribly counterproductive. Don’t bemoan the way things were. They will never be that way again. Pour your energy, every bit of it, into adapting to your new world, into learning the skills you need to prosper in it and into shaping it around you. Whereas the old land presented limited opportunity or none at all,

the new land enables you to have a future whose rewards are worth all the risks.