Inside Intel's Andy Grove
11/10/2006 --
Historian Richard Tedlow examines the life and times of Holocaust survivor
and Intel CEO in new biography.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Andy Grove, longtime chairman and CEO of computer chip-maker Intel and Time
magazine's 1997 "Man of the Year," was born on the wrong side
of history, says Harvard business historian Richard S. Tedlow, author of a new
biography, Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American.
Born on September 2, 1936, in Budapest to Jewish parents, Grove contracted
scarlet fever at age four and as a youngster underwent multiple surgeries to
restore his hearing. So began what Tedlow described as an "oxymoronic life of
adaptation and change and a laser-like focus."
Speaking at the Stephen M. Ross School's 2006 Reunion weekend on October 27, Tedlow
went beyond the facts of Grove's life — survived the Holocaust, lived
under Soviet occupation, escaped to New York at age 20, put himself through
the City College of New York, earned a PhD in chemical engineering from the
University of California, Berkeley in 1963, co-founded Intel in 1968 and became
CEO in 1987.
Dean Robert J. Dolan and Richard Tedlow |
In his fast-paced and often humorous presentation, Tedlow engaged the more
than 250 alumni in the East Hall auditorium with stories and photographs of
Grove at various stages in his life. Tedlow also joked about the November 18
U-M-Ohio State football game at Columbus, telling the alums, "Ohio State's colors
are red and gray. They must be commies. You owe it to the country to win that
game. The whole world is watching." In all, more than 1,000 alumni, family and
friends participated in Reunion weekend festivities.
Tedlow, the Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard
Business School, talked about how Grove attacks problems. The author of Giants
of Enterprise, selected by BusinessWeek as one of the best business books of
2001, spent several years researching and interviewing Grove, who also gave
Tedlow all his notes while at Intel.
Grove, a self-taught manager and author of Only the Paranoid Survive, is suspicious
of the word "leadership," Tedlow said. In business and in his personal
life he cares more about what a person knows than the person's title or
position.
When diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995, Tedlow said, Grove became his
own oncologist, studying the pros and cons of surgery and radiation implants.
Based on that research, he chose radiation even though the physician who was
to perform the procedure said if it were him, he would opt for surgery.
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an
American by Richard Tedlow, November 2006 |
Another time, Grove had written an 8,000-word article for Fortune magazine.
Bethany McLean, a 24-year-old reporter, found an error in one of his charts.
In an e-mail to Tedlow describing the event, Grove wrote: "Bethany was a researcher
assigned to my story. She was methodically going through factoids and all went
well until she claimed she found an error in one of my graphs that I constructed
from published data. After some back and forth, I conceded the point and nursed
my wounded pride. The back and forth was heated at times.
"After I recovered, I wrote her one of my handwritten notes, thanking
her for her thoroughness. During my next visit to Fortune a number of months
later, I found out that the note and Bethany were much talked about. I asked
to see her and in fact was introduced to her. In the process, I found out she
was a boxer. Had I known that, I would have backed down earlier. I was not surprised
when she turned out to be an early debunker of the Enron financials."
For McLean to stand up to Grove took courage, Tedlow said. "Andy can
be extremely scary." But he also respects accurate data and will admit
when he is wrong.
For Grove, now a senior adviser at Intel, Tedlow said "knowledge power"
trumps "position power." Grove listens to middle management and
people on the front line, the most knowledgeable people in the organization,
to keep abreast of what is happening.
Other principles for growing a business on Grove's list:
- Fear can be good and bad. Companies should be afraid of losing market share,
but employees should not be afraid to speak up.
- Learn by teaching. Grove continues to teach at Stanford University.
- Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Generate as many ideas as possible
before making a decision.
- Dive deeply into the data.
- Trust your gut.
- Avoid the trap of the first version.
- Test the tests. Challenge assumptions. When Grove was deciding how to treat
his prostate cancer, he sent blood samples for prostate-specific antigen tests
to two labs so he could compare the results.
"Andy's life story says a lot of wonderful things about America,"
Tedlow said. "He is very smart, clever and ambitious and became one of
the master managers in the history of American business. It really is a hell
of a story."
For more information, contact:
Mary Jo Frank
Phone: 734-647-4626
E-mail: mjfrank@umich.edu
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