Book Description
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 calls such a moment a Strategic Inflection Point, which can be set off by almost anything: mega-competition, a change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology. When a Strategic Inflection Point hits, the ordinary rules of business go out the window. Yet, managed right, a Strategic Inflection Point can be an opportunity to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever.
Grove underscores his message by examining his own record of success and failure, including how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened Intel's reputation in 1994, and how he has dealt with the explosions in growth of the Internet. The work of a lifetime,
Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic of managerial and leadership skills.
The Currency Paperback edition of
Only the Paranoid Survive includes a new chapter about the impact of strategic inflection points on individual careers--how to predict them and how to benefit from them.
Customer Reviews:
Great Insight Into a Business Leader's World.......2007-10-20
This book covers the history of Intel, some great stories, his management approach and even the daily regime of a business warrior. I highly recommend. And another thing I like - it is relatively short.
Enriching Personal Real-Life Account by Someone Who Had Managed a Mega-Size Corporation!!! .......2007-03-20
The real value of this book is that it is written by someone, Andrew Grove, who has actual experiences and managed a start-up right up to a mega successful corporation. There are tons of management and marketing books written by people, based on case-studies and analysis, but lack actual experiences managing or working in a corporation.
The main concept of this book is on strategic inflection point, which is a time in the life of the business when its fundamentals are about to change. This change can either infer an opportunity to rise to new heights or signal the beginning of the end. Hence, this book is about the impact of changing rules, guidelines to assist in identifying those situations and about finding your way through those uncharted territories. This book serves to raise our awareness of going through cataclysmic changes and to provide a framework in which to deal with them.
This book uses Porter's competitive analysis strategy in terms of the 6 forces as a base. The 6 forces are
1. Power, vigor and competence of existing competitors
2. Power, vigor and competence of complementors
3. Power, vigor and competence of customers
4. Power, vigor and competence of suppliers
5. Power, vigor and competence of potential competitors
6. Power, vigor and competence of substitutes
Once a very large change happens in one or several of these 6 forces, a "10X" force is in effect. Very often the transition from a normal business environment to that of a "10X" business environment is very gradual and thus, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time in which the "10X" force came about. Strategic inflection point comes about when this balance of forces shifts from the normal environment to that of the new "10X" environment and it is difficult to pinpoint its exact occurrence.
The circumstances that help to identify this strategic inflection point are
1. Presence of troubling sense that something is different such as changes in customers' attitudes, entrant of new competitors, etc.
2. Growing dissonance or misalignment between corporate statements and operation actions.
3. Emergence of new framework or actions.
4. New set of corporate statements is generated.
Andrew gave an analogy of working your way though a strategic inflection point to be just like venturing into the valley of death, the perilous transition between the old and the new environments. It is difficult to know the right moment to execute the appropriate actions. Since timing is everything, it is attractive to undertake these changes when the company is in a healthy financial state. This means "acting when not everything is known, when the data aren't in.", merely relying on "instinct and personal judgments" (Chapt 2). Hence it is a matter of training your instincts to pick up a different set of signals.
The only way we know whether a change signals a strategic inflection point is through the process of clarification that comes from broad and intensive debate. This debate should involve technical discussions, marketing discussions and considerations of strategic repercussions (how will it affect our business if we make a dramatic move; how will it affect if we don't?). The more complex the issues are, the more levels of management should be involved because people from different levels of management bring completely different points of view and expertise. The debate should involve people from outside the company, customers and partners with different areas of expertise and interests. When dealing with emerging trends, you may very well have to go against rational extrapolation of data and rely instead on anecdotal observations and your instincts. (chapter 6). Constructively debating tough issues and getting somewhere is only possible when people can speak their minds without fear of punishment.
Andrew offers a few guidelines to discern "signal" from "noise"
1. Is your key competitor about to change? Suggested using the "silver bullet test": If you had just one bullet, whom among your many competitors would you save it for? When the answer to this question stops being as crystal clear, it is time to sit up and pay special attention.
2. Is your key complementor about to change? Does the company that in the past years mattered the most to your business seem less important today? Does it look like another company is about to eclipse them? If so, it may be a sign of shifting industry dynamics.
3. Does it seem that people who for years had been very competent have suddenly gotten decoupled from what really matters? If key aspects of the business shift around us, the very process that got us where we were might retard your ability to recognize the new trends.
Generally you cannot judge the significance of the strategic inflection point by the quality of the first version or release of the product. You will need to draw on your experiences to discern its possible impacts.
Strategic dissonance is the divergence between actions and statements; saying one thing and doing another. Strategic dissonance is an automatic reaction to a strategic inflection point that probing for it is perhaps the best test of one.
Clarity of direction, which includes describing what we are going after, as well as, describing what we will not be going after, is exceedingly important at the late stage of a strategic transformation. This book defines strategic plans as statements of what we intend to do, whereas strategic actions as steps we have already taken or are taking. Strategic plans are abstract and are usually couched in language meant for the company's management. Strategic actions matter because they immediately affect people's lives. The most effective way to transform a company is through a series of incremental changes that are consistent with a clearly articulated end result.
This book mentions the "Taillight" approach - some companies may profitably wait for others to test the limits of technological possibilities or market acceptance and then commit to following, catching up and passing them.
A question that often comes up at times of strategic transformation is whether you should pursue a highly focused approach, betting everything on one strategic goal or should you hedge. It takes every erg of energy in your organization to do a good job pursuing one strategic aim, especially in the face of aggressive and competent competition. It is hard to lead the organization out of the valley of death without a clear and simple strategic direction. Demoralized organizations are unlikely to be able to deal with multiple objectives. Thus, hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment, and is not recommended.
"Most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves... The greatest danger is in standing still" (Chapter 8).
The leader needs to show interest in the elements leading to the strategic direction, by getting involved in details that are appropriate to the new direction and by withdrawing attention, energy and involvement from those things that do not fit. At times like this, the calendar is the most important strategic tools in communication. Andrew emphasizes that communicating strategic change in an interactive exposed fashion is important and necessary such as corporate email announcements and meetings, etc.
Companies that successfully navigate through strategic inflection points tend to have a good dialectic between bottom-up and top-down actions. Bottom-up actions come from the ranks of middle managers, who by the nature of their jobs are exposed to the first whiffs of the winds of change, who are located at the peripheral of the action where change is first perceived and who catch on early. But by the nature of their work, they can only affect things locally. Their actions must meet halfway the actions generated by senior management. While those managers are isolated from the winds of change, but once they commit themselves to a new direction, they can affect the strategy of the entire organization. The best results seem to prevail when bottom-up and top-down actions are equally strong. When the top management lets go a little, the bottom-up actions will drive towards chaos by experimenting, by pursuing different product strategies, by generally pulling the company in a multiplicity of directions. After such creative chaos reigns and a direction becomes clear, it is up to senior management to reign in chaos. A pendulum-like swing between the 2 types of actions is the best way to work your way through a strategic transformation. What is needed is a balanced interaction between the middle managers, with their deep knowledge but narrow focus and senior management, whose larger perspective could set a context.
An organization that has a culture that can deal with these 2 phases - debate (chaos reign) and a determined march (chaos reined in) is a powerful, adaptive organization. Such an organization has 2 important attributes:
1. It tolerates and even encourages debates. These debates are vigorous, devoted to exploring issues, indifferent to rank and include individuals of varied backgrounds.
2. It is capable of making and accepting clear decisions, with the entire organization then supporting the decision.
This book emphasizes on the concepts by reliving a few of Intel's crisis; the mid-80s shift from memory to microprocessors business, RISC vs CISC architecture and during the fall of 1994 the floating point bug associated with Intel's flagship device; the Pentium processor. The magnitude of this crisis is so significant in that a tiny flaw in the microprocessor's floating point unit could mushroom into half a billion dollars' worth of damage in less than 6 weeks. This was later narrowed down to 2 key factors. First the success of Intel's merchandising "Intel Inside" program, which has projected a strong Intel image right to the end-user, became a double-edge sword in that end users directly contact Intel for a replacement microprocessor. In a normal incidence, it is likely to be the computer manufacturers who will perform the recall and replacement. But Intel's identity is so strong with the end-users that they became the ones asking for a recall and replacement. Second, the other factor is attributed to Intel's sheer size. Intel had become gigantic in the eyes of the computer buyers. And thus the huge cost in replacement.
This book also relates the transition of the computer industry in the 80s vertical alignment to that in the 90s; the horizontal alignment. This came about with the appearance of the microprocessor and then the personal computer. The "10X" force came about when the technology permitted the integration of several chips into one single chip and this same microprocessor enabled the production of all kinds of personal computers. As the microprocessor became the basic building block, economics of mass production worked its charm giving extremely cost-effective PCs. Over time, this changed the entire structure of the industry and a new horizontal industry emerged. As a result of this trend, companies previously successful in the vertical alignment, but who failed to adapt or recognize this "10X" force failed and no longer existed today. Examples are Wang and Cray. At the same time, this change also spelled opportunities for new entrants such as Dell and Compaq. Thus when an industry goes through a strategic inflection point, the practitioners of the old industry may have trouble, while on the other hand, this new environment provides opportunities for new entrants into this industry.
The key characteristics of horizontal industries is that they live and die by mass production and mass marketing, bringing cost-effective solutions and more specialization, i.e the best in class for that particular market segment such as TV monitors, memory, storage devices, etc.
The new rules of the horizontal industry are
1. Do not differentiate without a difference. Do not introduce improvements whose only purpose is to give you an advantage over your competitor without giving your customer a substantial advantage. Example is a "better PC" departed from the mainstream standard and hence giving rise to software incompatibility.
2. Grab opportunity when there is a technology break or change coming along.
3. Price for what the market will bear. Price for volume. Work like the devil on your costs so that it becomes profitable. This leads to economies of scale whereby by being a large-volume supplier, you can spread and recoup those costs. In contrast, cost-based pricing will often lead you into a niche position.
To be a leader or survivor in a horizontal and commoditized industry, this book provides some food for thought. A prime example is Intel exiting the commoditized memory industry in which they were once in the lead, until the entrance of the Japanese manufacturers.
Rhetoric and boring!.......2007-01-11
This book is rhetoric and boring with a few examples of successful and unsuccessful ventures so I started reading about Grove and his background.
The influence of communism in his early years seems to have put Grove in the paranoia groove. The culture of paranoia is clearly seen in Intel's business today- slow decision making, trust issues with employees and even customers!
Hire and fire culture has made the remaining employees work the system to `survive' rather than innovate and thrive.
Compare and contrast this Apple or for that matter even AMD and you will realize these companies are more in tune with their customers and employees (and hence their stock holders) in terms of basic trust.
We are not in a communist environment anymore. By being paranoid Grove's Intel has proved, you can only survive and barely at that.
Only for business managers?.......2006-08-28
Contrary to popular opinion on this website, I found this book to be boring, repetitive and badly written. It was so boring I struggled to finish it during a journey where I had little else to do. This book summarizes a few events that were significant to Intel and offers advice on how similar business changes should be handled. Being an engineer, and not a manager, I found this to be vague and rambling. However I do agree with the book's title - Only the Paranoid survive. I think this outlook is useful for everyone, and not just business types.
Lengthy Writing.......2006-01-27
I picked up this book after seeing some good reviews about it.
The whole book is about "Strategic Reflection Point".
I was disappointed that Andy Grove didn't try to explain SRP in a more concrete manner. After finishing the book, I still have very vague & abstract knowledge on SRP.
Nevertheless, Andy Grove is still one of the best CEOs I admired.
Book Description
The definitive biography of an enigmatic business legend
Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel during its years of explosive growth, is on the shortlist of America's most admired businesspeople, along with Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Brilliant, brave, and willing to defy conventional wisdom, Grove is, according to Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow, “the best model we have for leading a business in the twenty-first century.”
Grove gave Tedlow unprecedented access to his private papers, along with wide-ranging interviews and access to his closest friends and key business associates. Nothing was off limits, and Tedlow was free to draw his own conclusions. The result is not just a gripping life story but a fascinating analysis of how Grove attacks problems.
Born a Hungarian Jew in 1936, Andras Istvan Grof survived the Nazis only to face the Soviet invasion of his country. He fled to America at age twenty, studied engineering, and arrived in Silicon Valley just in time for a historic opportunity. He became the third employee of Intel, working for the legendary Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce.
As talented as he was as an engineer, Grove became an even better manager, as we learn from exclusive excerpts from his secret management diaries. Tedlow shows us exactly how that penniless immigrant taught himself to lead a major corporation through some of the toughest challenges in the history of business.
This is an inspiring biography that will enthrall anyone who cares about technology or leadership.
Customer Reviews:
The early years are the best.......2007-05-25
Anyone interested in reading about Andy Grove probably already knows he is far from your typical American business executive. Maybe it's the risky flight from Hungary as a penniless emigrant. Maybe it's his self-made success turning into a highly visible leader in a dynamic industry built from scratch. Maybe it's his own writings. Maybe it's all of those, and more.
Tedlow covers the whole story in detail, and the book moves most crisply in the recounting of Grove's youth, and his time in America from his fortunate arrival to the first few years at Intel. Grove's personal history and the birth of the semiconductor and PC industries are simply too fascinating to ignore, especially for other technologists who were around at the time.
This bio is no hagiography. Grove is praised repeatedly and at length for his hard work, focus, and brilliant leadership, which he richly deserves. There is simply no way a reader would conclude, "Now, why is this guy famous?" Tedlow still calls him out for mistakes and also lets Grove point the finger at himself plenty of times. You can't learn enough about a figure such as Grove just by hitting the highlights. Besides, the bad news makes for some of the best stories. Maybe this is a bit like baseball, where a guy who hits .350 for a career is a lock for the Hall of Fame.
I felt the coverage of Grove's mature years and the 1980s-90s at Intel was inconsistently told. Sometimes we had a good explanation of what Grove was thinking and why he and Intel did what they did, or didn't do something else. In other cases, barely a word was said. For example, how exactly did Grove and his executive team decide to get in and out of various diversifications, most of which failed? How did Grove go about managing through some downturns, other than by lopping off large numbers of people?
I could do without some of the author's unnecessary asides, such as a reference to "Reagan's mindless happy talk." What's the point, unless Andy Grove said it?
Please consider reading Andy Grove's own books, especially "Swimming Across". Grove is an excellent writer himself, with a lot to say, as anyone reading his bio can certainly appreciate. Tedlow was blessed to have Grove's own extensive notebooks as a source.
Enjoyable but Disappointing.......2007-05-12
Being an immigrant myself, I always regard Andy as one of the most admirable models. In fact, that was the main reason that I enjoyed reading this book, from cover to cover. However, after finishing it, I've found that I have been left with repeated scorecards of Intel's business performance but not enough descriptions and portraits about Andy himself, about his personality, how he articulated his ideas, how he got work done, and what he actually did. I've found cases that the author just gave blank statements about Andy without explanations or examples. For example, what arguments did Andy bring up that made him from being denied to being allowed to enter US, or simply by playing tough? How did he persuade a quiting key employee to change his mind, or simply by offering more money? What was the case that Andy won an argument even he knew he was wrong? and so on. You'll notice those emptiness when you read them. I think the book would have been much better in help readers understand Andy if the author could have dug a bit deeper in presenting him. Overall, this is a decent book, just not satisfying my curiosity much.
Readable, detailed bio of Intel's leader.......2007-03-19
"Americans don't know how lucky they are," a young immigrant named Andy Grove told The New York Times in 1960 after graduating first in his engineering class. "Friends told me all that I needed was ability." This wonderful book describes how the able and autodidactic Andy Grove went from penurious refugee to prince of Silicon Valley. Richard S. Tedlow, a historian who teaches at Harvard Business School, neither lionizes nor lambastes Grove. Instead, he provides gigabytes of facts about one of the twentieth century's most demanding and successful technology leaders. While it is sometimes a bit too detailed, we think this book is a treat for anyone interested in leadership, management, economic history or technology. No rags-to-riches story could have a better protagonist than profane, irascible, brilliant Andy Grove.
Andy Grove - An Incredible Man!.......2007-03-10
Andy Grove is an incredible man, achieving the American dream, starting as a penniless immigrant and rising to head Intel - a giant leader in the semiconductor industry. Grove is one of the few to achieve both technical (Berkley PhD in chemical engineering) and managerial excellence (named one of America's top managers). In route, Andy also overcame scarlet fever and prostate cancer (doing so considerable personal research into the medical literature - building up the insight to identify patient selection bias in much of the original literature and the courage to go against prevailing medical wisdom to undertake a new treatment approach); unfortunately, the medical battle continues - now against Parkinson's Disease.
"Facing reality" are key words that describe Grove's life. As a youngster his mother acted quickly to avoid Andy being taken in by SS dragnets in Hungary; later, he himself took quick action to escape Soviet abuses and left his home, parents, and university classes to come to an unknown fate in America. Grove's "bias towards action" continued at Intel, leading him (and Gordon Moore) to abandon its memory-production base and switch to producing Intel's now highly successful CPUs; the analysis and subsequent actions, however, required three years - quite a long time in Grove's perspective.
Other courageous acts as an Intel leader included the "Red X" campaign to pull demand from users (instead of relying on manufacturers), converting the 386 to single-source production - risking IBM's wrath, but ultimately avoiding commodity competition while competing with other manufacturers, further reducing potential competition through "Intel Inside" promotions, and sticking with the slower but more broadly capable CISC architecture when Intel was threatened by faster, but more limited RISC products (Grove admits he almost made the wrong choice here - however, eventually banking on the recognition that Moore's Law would minimize RISC benefits, Grove had the courage to defy competitors and stick with RISC). One decision that Grove initially got wrong was to hang tough when it was found that Intel's Pentium sometimes made minor math errors - fortunately the strong culture Grove had helped build at Intel allowed the error and controversy to persist for only a week before free replacements were offered to all.
Now Intel faces the future with progressively less involvement by Andy Grove; the good news is that the strong culture he built through innumerable personnel decisions will continue to guide the firm.
My only quarrels with "Andy Grove" is that 1)its author took too many sidetracks - eg. also briefly covering Microsoft and others, and 2)he did not explain why Intel thought it would be more successful against the Japanese in CPUs vs. memory chips.
READ this book - LEARN about a MASTER!!!!.......2007-03-08
This is a book that every businessman confronted with the problems of rapid change needs to read. Intel the giant technology company is Andy Grove, and Andy Grove is Intel. More than any other single individual, Grove left his footprint on this company. He started off as Intel's 3rd hire; the first two were Gordon Moore, and Bob Noyce, two other Silicon Valley legends. By the time Grove was finished there were tens of thousands of employees.
You might recall that Gordon Moore, Andy's mentor is the creator of the famous "Moore's Law". There are many variations of Moore's Law, and Moore never called it a law by the way. Essentially it means that the computer power that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months, some say 2 years, and the cost drops by half. The law has basically held up since its inception in 1965.
Richard Tedlow, the author is a full Professor at Harvard Business School. He has obviously put his heart and soul into this book. Andy Grove did not read this book until it was finished, and published. He did not want to get into a shoot-out about what was in the book. You might recall that Grove wrote several books himself. One of them had the great title, "Only the Paranoid Survive". I believe this biography is better than the books Grove wrote.
Grove has stated that the author knows more about him, than he knows about himself. Upon reading the book, Grove could not figure out how the author was able to obtain so much information about him. In the end, this is what an author is supposed to do, isn't it? The vital concepts that I took out of Tedlow's writings are:
1) Here's a man that should have died three times before he got to America. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1946, as a Jewish born child he survives the Nazi invasion that included the extermination of 2/3rds of the Jewish population. He develops Scarlet fever, which should have killed him, and then the Russians defeat the Germans, and Andy survives the Russians who killed thousands of additional Hungarians.
2) Andy takes the enormously difficult step of leaving everything, his parents, his homeland, his friends, his groundings, and literally walks out of Hungary in the middle of the night during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Keep in mind, there's no Internet, no television pictures of America, nothing to base a move on. He simply demonstrates undaunted courage in walking away from everything that is familiar.
3) He makes it to the US, lives with an aunt and uncle in the Bronx, and goes to City College of NY because it's free and he has zero money. Graduating number 1 in his engineering class, he goes to California, and winds up at Berkeley where he earns a Ph.D.
4) He knew how to find MENTORS though, and this is a vital part of the book. You find great men, and MANAGE UP the relationship. From world renowned college professors, to the best known technical geniuses in the business world which include legends Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore, Andy Grove knew how to hitch his wagon to STARS.
Grove walks out of Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel with Moore and Noyce with the financing provided by Arthur Rock, the most famous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley history bar none. Moore and Noyce get all the stock and Grove gets to buy in at a price ten times higher, even though he's the number three guy in the company. He handled it well though. It did not seem to interfere with what he had to do. A lot of people would have had problems with the stock distribution from day one. I do Venture Capital as part of my business, I know.
Here's a man who puts his nose to the grindstone, and comes up a winner. There are several hundred pages devoted to how Andy Grove transforms himself out of necessity into a businessman, something very few people in Silicon Valley know anything about. While the two big guys are getting all the credit, it's Grove who keeps the place alive during the massive up-and-down cycles that this industry experienced over 2 plus decades.
You could very much make the case that if Andy Grove did not exist, than Intel would have never survived to be the company we all recognize today as the number one producer of sophisticated microprocessors in the world. It's really all Grove. Science, and technology will only take you so far. In the end, you have to make a product that people, or companies want to buy. You have to make it reliable, and affordable.
Moore and Noyce could create such microprocessors without Andy Grove. Could they replicate them tens of thousands of times perfectly without Grove, not in a million years? Grove's internal gift was his ability to take his own massive brainpower, and be flexible enough to apply it to areas outside his expertise, or circle of competence, as Warren Buffett likes to talk about.
In closing, I went through the whole book, and circled the words and phrases that the author used to describe Grove. Read some of these: He did not hesitate, he wasn't frozen with fear. He had a survival strategy hardwired into him. He moves fast, is decisive, and effective. He is not weighed down by the past. He learned a tough, brusque, no-nonsense behavior.
When you are done reading this book, you will have lived in this man's shoes for a while. You will know what it was like to live Andy Grove's life. You can try on that life if you will, and see if this is the sort of life you would like to have lived. That's what great reading is all about, isn't it?
Richard Stoyeck
StocksAtBottom.com
Book Description
This is a user-friendly guide to the art and science of management from Andrew S. Grove, the president of America's leading manufacturer of computer chips. Groves recommendations are equally appropriate for sales managers, accountants, consultants, and teachers--anyone whose job entails getting a group of people to produce something of value. Adapting the innovations that have made Intel one of America's most successful corporations,
High Output Management teaches you:
what techniques and indicators you can use to make even corporate recruiting as precise and measurable as manufacturing
how to turn your subordinates and coworkers into members of highly productive team
how to motivate that team to attain peak performance every time
Combining conceptual elegance with a practical understanding of the real-life scenarios that managers encounter every day,
High Output Management is one of those rare books that have the power to revolutionize the way we work
Customer Reviews:
Sound advice, if they really use it.......2002-09-11
I worked at Intel for over 5 years, and although this book is chock full of excellent strategies and advice for managers, I saw very little evidence that these principles were being put into use in the company during the entire time I was there, at least in my division, which was one of the bigger ones at the company.
I will say, however, that Intel is a very odd place to work with its own unique corporate culture, some of which I would say is quite functional, but a lot of it isn't; or at least, the principles they say do work really don't, because nobody has the nerve to apply them.
A good example of this is their principle of "risk-taking." This gets talked about more than most of the Intel cultural values. The reason is simple, although they say that it's okay to take risks, and that you won't be penalized if you fail, the reality is that no-one in their right mind ever does it if they don't have to. And it's not because your manager will give you a [rear-end]-reaming like you've never had before if your calculated risk fails and becomes a total disaster. That won't happen, because, as I said, they really do take this risk-taking principle seriously. Your boss may even commend you for having the cojones to take the risk even if your little project becomes a spectacular failure.
The problem is in a much more serious area, unfortunately. If you fail, you'll get penalized through your performance review. (And if you're an exempt employee, all it takes is two below average performance reviews and you can be fired. They don't even have to be really poor reviews). Suppose you spend 6 months working on a risky project that fails. Now it's review time. Because you wasted so much time on this other project, you won't have very many other successful projects to brag about, compared to all the other employees who didn't have the cojones like you did to take a chance, but who now have lesser but at least successful projects they can ballyhoo during "ranking and rating," (or "ranting and raving," as it's called). Hence, you won't be able to compete in Intel's intensive and truly byzantine performance-review process, which insures that people pick safer but less potentially beneficial projects that they know they can pull off and bring in under the wire by review time.
Another very odd thing about working there is that teamwork is valued almost over and above technical competence and originality. In fact, I would have to say Intel employees are about the most docile, uncomplaining, non-individualistic, and basically whipped employees I've ever seen. Someone should tell these guys it's okay to have a spine or a ... once in a while, instead of going through their work-life as a totally whipped, spineless eclair. Quite frankly, I'm not the most studly, macho guy in the world, myself, but these guys make me look like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all rolled into one.
Anyway, whether the principles and strategies in this book are actually being put into practice or not, Andy Grove is certainly a brilliant manager, and Intel is a more than unusually interesting place to work.
Good book of management techniques.......2001-05-02
This was a good book. I was not able to apply all of the techniques, but most of it came in useful. I always liked what Andy Grove did with Intel, his visions and his capability to keep Intel on the top. It's a good book. Read it. It will take you a couple of days, but you will be a better person after you have read it...
Good book but..........2001-04-19
Perhaps the strategies in this book work because Intel's people work very hard at implementing them, not because they are inherently better than other ideas.
When I first started at Intel one of the things I noticed right off was how old Intel employees looked for their age (at least the ones that had been there for 7-10 years or more) compared to the other companies I had worked at over the years. I noticed women only in their early 30's who had worked there since their early 20's, for whom the rosy bloom of youth had long since departed from their cheeks. The men also looked older.
I am not especially young-looking for my age, but I frequently get comments from Intel employees about how young I look for my age. Maybe that's because I haven't been here that long. Outside of Intel I rarely get comments like this. I may not look that young to most people for my age, but at least I don't look older than my age.
On an even more sobering note, health researchers have found that people who look old for their age actually have shorter life expectancies, and correspondingly, people who look young for their age have longer life expectancies.
I suspect that Intel's workaholic employees are the main reason for its success, but I wonder if they themselves understand the toll this success has exacted from them.
Management - Straight from the horses mouth!.......2000-07-03
This book made its way onto the short list of books that I have picked up and read cover to cover in one sitting. Andrew Grove helped create a small memory chip manufacturer, and in the face of increased foreign competition, turned his company around to create the largest producer of computer processor chips to date. This book is a concise explanation of the methods and tactics he used to make Intel what it is.
Management in a nutshell.......2000-02-15
Grove does an excellent job of relating production methods to something we can all understand, a food and beverage establishment. Aside from the production model, Grove opens the hood and examines compensation systems, meetings, employee review procedures and processes, and briefly discusses motivation ala Maslow's heirarchy. It's good, easy reading, and may be very informative and thought provoking to the open mind looking top gain a better understanding of Industrial Management.
Amazon.com
Massive change is hitting corporate America at a furious and escalating pace, writes Andrew Grove in
Only the Paranoid Survive, and businesses that strive hard to keep abreast of the transition will be the only ones that prevail. And Grove should know. As chief executive of Intel, he wrestled with one of the business world's great challenges in 1994 when a flaw in his company's new cornerstone product -- the Pentium processor -- grew into a front-page controversy that seriously threatened its future.
Book Description
Under Andy Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest chipmaker, the fifth-most-admired company in America, and the seventh-most-profitable company among the Fortune 500. You don't achieve rankings like these unless you have mastered a rare understanding of the art of business and an unusual way with its practice.
Few CEOs can claim this level of consistent record-breaking success. Grove attributes much of this success to the philosophy and strategy he reveals in Only the Paranoid Survive--a book that is unique in leadership annals for offering a bold new business measure, and for taking the reader deep inside the workings of a major corporation. Grove's contribution to business thinking concerns a new way of measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads--the moment when massive change occurs and all bets are off. The success you had the day before is gone, destroyed by unforeseen changes that hit like a stage-six rapid. Grove calls such moments Strategic Inflection Points, and he has lived through several. When SlPs hit, all rules of business shift fast, furiously, and forever. SlPs can be set off by almost anything--megacompetition, an arcane change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology.
Yet in the watchful leader's hand, SlPs can be an ace. Managed right, a company can turn a SIP into a positive force to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever.
To achieve that level of mastery over change, you must know its properties inside and out. Grove addresses questions such as these: What are the stages of these tidal waves? What sources do you turn to in order to foresee dangers before trouble announces itself? When threats abound, how do you deal with your emotions, your calendar, your career--as well as with your most loyal managers and customers, who may cling to tradition?
No stranger to risk, Grove examines his own record of success and failure, including the drama of how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened Intel in a major way, and how he is dealing with the SIP brought on by the Internet. The work of a lifetime of reflection, Only the Paranoid Survive is a contemporary classic of leadership skills.
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The founder of Intel, Andrew Grove is one of the great business leaders of our time--and 1997 "Time" magazine Man of the Year. Under Andrew Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest chip maker and one of the most admired companies in the world.
Customer Reviews:
Waste Of Time.......2005-11-25
This is by far the worst business book I have read in recent years. It is hard to believe that Andy Grove actually thought that this material was worth putting into a book. As other reviews have said, this book at most should have been a short article in Business Week...but even then it would require some actual content to make it worth reading. The best part of the book is the quotes on the cover from Steve Jobs et al. It makes me wonder if they even read the book.
save several valuable hours of your life- skip this book.......2005-10-19
Maybe I haven't read enough "management" books (though I do have an MBA), but if this is considered "great" for this genre- WOW. This entire book could have been summed up in a couple pages without losing any major points, but I guess you can't have a bestseller that way! One reviewer said it was too technical. Are you living in a cave? I found it condescendingly written- absurdly simple and dumbed down. Granted, it's over a decade old, but I doubt everyone was really that much stupider ten years ago.
All Fear the Status Quo.......2000-07-20
Andy Grove has verbalized the mindset that we must all develop to survive in the 21st Century. While his idea of constantly looking over your shoulder has always been applicable, the speed of the Internet economy requires that we do it much more frequently and penalizes us much more quickly if we do not.
Grove does a great job of showing how one man's crises is another's opporuntity and uses the term strategic inflection points to describe these periods of 10x change.
This book is a good reminder for anyone who thinks that what made them successful to this point is any guarantee that they will be successful in the future.
Nothing new here.......2000-07-07
This is something that any first year business student could have written. It is a fast read but it provides no new insights.
Want to be a great manager - Go to West Point.......1999-12-02
I was very dissapointed by this book as a lesson in management. The lessons learned are basic management and military strategy that every CEO should now. i.e. Basic lessons from the book: include understanding the nature of the battlefield (6 forces that affect business), recognizing change (strategic intelligence), listening to the troops in the field, making sure you're not insulated from the bad news, seperate the noise from real intelligence, have the courage to make changes, issue clear orders, re-evaluate and adjust as conditions change, be prepared to replace the top management (not for incompetence, but to get fresh perspectives (change the old guard and the old ways of doing things), Realize that your company runs on the quality of middle management (i,e NCO and junior officers in the military). Give them clear goals and empower them to act. I have a lot of respect for Andy Grove, and the insights into his business was great, but if you want a good management book, read a military strategy manual. There's nothing new here.
Amazon.com
Andrew Grove has earned fame and fortune as chairman and cofounder of Intel. But, we learn from this remarkable memoir, he began life under very different circumstances, narrowly escaping the Holocaust and the closing of the Iron Curtain.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936, Grove--then called Andras Grof--grew up in a modestly prosperous, secular Jewish family. Through foresight and sheer good fortune, they avoided the fate of many of their fellow Jews, fleeing the Nazis into the countryside and living in a dark cellar in which "the sound of artillery was a continuous backdrop." Under the Communist regime that followed, Grove distinguished himself as a student of chemistry and was seemingly destined for a comfortable position in academia or industry--until revolution broke out in 1956 and he found himself in that cellar once again.
How Grove emerged, "swam across" to America, and made a new life under a new name makes a satisfying conclusion to this humane memoir, which gives readers valuable insight into the business guru and technologist. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Andrew Grove has earned fame and fortune as chairman and cofounder of Intel. But, we learn from this remarkable memoir, he began life under very different circumstances, narrowly escaping the Holocaust and the closing of the Iron Curtain.Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936, Grove--then called Andras Grof--grew up in a modestly prosperous, secular Jewish family. Through foresight and sheer good fortune, they avoided the fate of many of their fellow Jews, fleeing the Nazis into the countryside and living in a dark cellar in which "the sound of artillery was a continuous backdrop." Under the Communist regime that followed, Grove distinguished himself as a student of chemistry and was seemingly destined for a comfortable position in academia or industry--until revolution broke out in 1956 and he found himself in that cellar once again.How Grove emerged, "swam across" to America, and made a new life under a new name makes a satisfying conclusion to this humane memoir, which gives readers valuable insight into the business guru and technologist. --Gregory McNamee
Customer Reviews:
A pudgy Jewish outsider becomes a determined U.S. immigrant.......2006-11-10
The reason we should read biographies, to my mind, is clear - to find out what drives other people towards success, towards failure, towards redemption, towards evil, even to find out how the Mansons, Stalins, Hitlers and Husseins grew up. The pursuit of a clue towards a person's later decisions is a delicious game, to find the key events in childhood that makes that person later go down in the history books.
However, there is one problem in an autobiography: the person is himself writing it, therefore editting out consciously and unconsciously factors that may well have been much more critical, omitted due to personal embarassment or because the family members and friend are still alive.
Reading the life of Andrew Grove, according to Andrew Grove (born Andras Grof), is to have a feeling that his whole childhood was drawn through a cheesecloth with small holes. If he did write it all himself, without outside editting, it reads in a very simplistic way, for a very complex man. It seems as if the "big words" were taken out, the more complex self-examination of his soul was either never set to paper, or deleted.
Nevertheless, you will find this book a good read, like a suspense story, as young Andris, only child of a Jewish comfortable family in pre-WWII Budapest, grows up with a strong sense of separation from others.
He has several marks against him from the start - he is Jewish, and all around him know it, and for the most part, in Europe, that was no plus. He rejects his own religion and remains fiercely secular, so he has no religious morality on which he hangs his decisions. He is a pudgy boy, whom others tease, whom girls reject. He turns to books, to study, to the English language, and finally to science, in his loneliness. His own father is taken away during the war, hence his mother loses her social life and is isolated along with her son. The situation is restored to prosperity and popularity after the war, when the father miraculously survives a dreadful work camp, returning home a filthy skeleton.
When the father is in clover, getting top level positions in the post-war economy, by means unclear to readers, all seems well, and people come in a steady flow to the house. Later, the father is accused of illegal activity, and loses his position and 75% of his salary, along with the pretty secretary and the car. The sensitive son, Andris, notices how popularity depends on the income and position of the father. NO doubt that this is driven deep into his consciousness more than anything else.
When a chance to leave Hungary arises in 1956 with the 17 days of fighting the Russian Communists, his parents do not hesitate to encourage him, for at least he has a fighting chance with relatives in New York City, and years of English lessons under his belt. These two factors hasten his journey by ship to America, where his relatives adopt him and support his way through college, until he has a degree in chemical engineering. His attachment to Hungary is weak to this day, and he has not returned since his mudcaked trudge over the border to Vienna. He never voices a strong hatred of Communists, perhaps because his own father must have been one to have been appointed an inspector in an area in which he was not qualified. Yet it is the Communist mentality which has hung over his country and threatened the Western world for decades. It is a strange omission in a man who celebrates America's open doors and willlingness to give immigrants a chance at great capitalistic success, something that could never have happened in a Russian-dominated nation.
I am impressed with this older man's willingness to write about his painful and persecuted youth, but any experienced reader can feel that there is a stiffness in the writing, especially in dealing with any of the women who did not mother him (i.e. his own mother and the aunt in NYC), as if the human elements in his life were not so critical for him. He seems to be a very tough nut, although he may have underneath some sentimentality, i.e. when the grandchildren were born, he wrote this book. He admits in the closing chapter that he himself is not sure why he does not return to the country of his youth, but I have my own suspicion - that he felt himself an outsider and a social failure throughout all those years, both as a Jew and a "nerd", and that his father's ups and downs with the economy and with the Communist affiliation made a much bigger impact than he will dare delve into. He perhaps underestimated the English-speaking world's understanding of this kind of dictatorship and decided not to go deeply into that part of everyday life.
Most refugees from Communism and Nazism are willing to go on for chapters about the restrictions and mind control of their homeland's dictatorships, but you will find that these are only briefly touched upon. I see the young Andris a boy of self-conscious, sensitive and rationally intelligence, who refuses to let external factors push him down, what the Finns call SISU. Whether it is outside takeovers like the fall of Hungary to COmmunism, the rape of his mother by the Russians, the imprisonment of his father, and other extremely horrid life situations, he shut his emotions down and plowed ahead. Yes, he is very much like the Finns, especially their men.
We can all admire Andrew Grove as a great leader of Intel, as a driven and highly intelligent man, but the person underneath, as revealed in this story, is a damaged and isolated person from his youth. No wonder that he did not want to write it down until so much later in life, when material success and a family of his own could prove that he was great.
Surprises me - Andrew Grove's childhood.......2004-10-02
Never would I have expected a man behind Intel could have such a childhood.I picked this book because it was written by Andrew Grove and mostly because it sets in the the times of World War II. Although I could not get much from a Jews perspective during the war time, however the book has captured some of the essence of tension during the period.
I was intrigued by his childhood story and found it hard to put the book down one I started reading it (Yes, it is cliche to say that..) The title of the book "Swimming Across" could not have been more appropriate with his escape from Hungary to the United States - that made such an outstanding person in man's history!
Interesting perspective, but lacking.......2004-09-07
When I finished this book, I was rather disappointed at its incompleteness. No doubt Andy Grove must be an extraordinary person after immigrating to America with almost nothing and then moving to become the CEO of Intel Corporation. His book gives some insight into his personality through his childhood experiences and his dedication to hard work can easily been seen through his striving for an education.
The most disappointing aspect of "Swimming Across" is that it does not explain how he became such a successful person after moving to America. The story ends after his college education from City College in New York. It does not describe any part of his involvement in the development of Intel Corporation. Rather than a biography, it is more of a complication of his childhood reflections.
A good portion of the story revolves around his childhood experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust, followed the Soviet occupation of Hungary. It is interesting to read from a historical perspective. Much of the book also deals with his interest in chemistry and his quests for girls during his gymnasium (high school) years.
The writing is easy to read and not very intricate. While it offers an interesting tale of his personal experiences as an American immigrant, it does not have very much on how to climb the corporate ladder. It has a very good glimpse into the real Andy Grove's personality from a first person perspective, but not the details on what made him stand out as a successful individual among other Americans.
Read this book or the content, not for literary strength.......2004-01-19
I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Grove some time back. He's an intelligent man, with a powerful persona and strong sense of character.
I was surprised then, when I picked up the text. Swimming Across did not meet my expectations from a literary perspective. The presentation is very simply written and seems to be directed at an individual with a 6th or 7th grade reading level. I nearly put the book down and opted for another as a result.
The story however, is compelling. Mr. Grof and his family found a way to survive, compete, and eventually excel despite very long odds in Nazi and Communist dominated Hungary.
Read this story for its content (it is stirring). Read this to understand the character development of a leader. It is likely that your respect for the individual (like mine) will have grown.
Stays with you.......2003-06-16
I loved this clear, accessible memoir about a boy (and later young man) who grows up in Hungary during the WWII and Revolution years, escapes to the West and comes to the United States to start a new life. I'm biased because my father is from Hungary and is of the exact same generation; he even had experiences similar to Mr. Grove's, going to preparatory high school, university, getting caught up in the Hungarian Revolution and escaping in the middle of the night to Austria. How wonderful to have some of the history and experiences of the times described in such an accessible way. The story is clear and straightforward and yet extremely moving, almost haunting. I loved how the title becomes clear when you read the book (an allusion to swimming across the lake of life and how not everyone makes it to the other side). How glad I am that Mr. Grove made it (across the Atlantic, at any rate) and wrote such a lovely book. It means a lot to at least one daughter of a Hungarian immigrant.
Book Description
How did a pioneering company in the semiconductor industry not only survive but thrive in the face of the explosive change and upheavals that forced it to transform itself twice in the course of its thirty-year history? The answer lies in the quality of its strategy-making process, contends leading strategic management scholar Robert A. Burgelman in this extraordinary book based on an exhaustive twelve-year study he conducted inside Intel Corporation.
Granted the opportunity to track Intel's strategy-making through his close teaching collaboration with its chairman, Andy Grove, at Stanford Business School since 1988, Burgelman has written a definitive and far-reaching account of how highly educated top managers groped their way through strategic conundrums. His account of the evolution of key events in Intel's history is illustrated with extensive quotes from its cofounder Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, current CEO Craig Barrett, and dozens of other Intel executives. His study allows these leaders to speak for themselves in scores of highly rendered executive portraits.
Using thoroughly tested conceptual tools, Burgelman first documents the key role played by mid-level managers in transforming Intel from a memory company into a microprocessor company during the late 1970s and early 1980s, which led to the heartbreaking decision to abandon the business on which the company had been founded in 1968. He then makes readers eyewitnesses to the complex set of complementary strategic thrusts orchestrated by Andy Grove to make Intel capi- talize on the extraordinary opportunities associated with the phenomenal growth of the PC industry during the late 1980s and the 1990s. He reconstructs Grove's resolution of the struggle between two competing micro- processor architectures within Intel that caused civil war to erupt, and he shows how Intel's superbly run strategy-making process in the core business, paradoxically, made it difficult for internal entrepreneurs to extend the company's strategic reach. This allows him to link the strategic leadership challenges, faced today by Craig Barrett, to Intel's illustrious past and to provide suggestions for how these challenges can be met.
At once a history of strategy-making at Intel as well as a strategy-making field manual that any high-technology manager will need to consult frequently, Strategy Is Destiny truly describes strategy-in-action as the way of life of senior executives in the corporation of the future.
Customer Reviews:
A summary of Prof Burgelman's Work.......2002-09-04
This is mainly an academic book, yet it can be insightful for CEOs or high and middle level executives too. The book describes and analyzes the extensive work of Prof. Burgelman in Strategy Process. Strategy-making cannot be considered as a pret-a-porter suit, yet Prof. Burgelman's model provides means to understand how to taylor one's suit.
Good stuff, if a bit dense. . ........2002-02-02
Prof. Burgelman is no Michael Porter.
Where Prof. Porter communicates complex ideas in simple terms, Prof. Burgelman finds extremely complicated ways to obscure simple ideas.
Luckily, this book is chock full of quotes and examples that Burgelman largely leaves untouched.
If you factor out Burgelman's poor organization, unbridled love for Intel, and penchant for incomprehensible prose, this is a great book. Burgelman was indeed provided unparalleled access to one of the most successful companies of the 20th century. The stories he tells are true. The quotes and examples are not self-serving.
The only thing missing here is a control group. Intel has entered the 21st century riding at least one strategic inflection point (a favorite term of Dr. Grove's). It would have been interesting if Burgelman would have stopped being a cheerleader for a moment and compared Intel to its closest analog: IBM of 10-15 years ago. Dr. Grove and Intel's "ESM" would be well-served to follow Dr. Grove's own advice and learn lessons from the past.
Still, a fascinating book, particularly for the competitive strategist. Not for the faint of heart.
Book Description
Strategic Dynamics: Concepts and Cases, by Burgelman, Grove, and Meza offers unique and valuable insight into strategy making for companies in information technology-driven industries. It is the product of over twelve years of teaching and research based on a unique combination of academic (Stanford’s Robert Burgelman) and industry (Intel’s Andy Grove) experience. The key themes and conceptual frameworks discussed in this book, along with its case studies and industry notes, provide instructors and students with a more complete viewpoint on the dynamic interactions of companies within industries and between industries than is typically found in books on strategy and technology strategy.
Customer Reviews:
The need for transformation during an on-going process of natural selection.......2007-05-21
According to Robert A. Burgelman and Andrew S. Grove, their primary objective when writing this book (with Philip E. Meza) was to find a way "to integrate action-based but reflective experience [Grove's] with theory-based but grounded academic research [Burgelman's] for the purpose of providing a novel learning experience for MBA students." Although I do not have an MBA degree, I have read and reviewed a number of books which have examined one or more dimensions of the general subject, strategic dynamics, and am especially interesting more about the evolution of information technology-driven companies (e.g. Intel, Microsoft, and IBM) as well as companies that heavily depend on digital technologies (e.g. Disney, Universal Music Group, and AT@T). Burgelman and Grove offer a wealth of information and insights about three interrelated conceptual themes: strategy and strategic dynamics (i.e. "the role of strategy in a company's evolution and the dynamic interplay between strategy and environment), strategy versus action (i.e. the reality of a given company's strategy resides in its execution rather than in its articulation), and industry change and corporate transformation (i.e. a company's adaptive capability depends critically on its strategy-making process).
When there are "divergences between a given company's stated strategy and strategic action and/or between its distinctive competencies and the basis of competition," Burgelman and Grove suggest, those divergences may indicate what they characterize as a "strategic inception point." Some of the most interesting material in one of Grove's other books, Only the Paranoid Survive, focuses on how Intel dealt with one. Here is a brief excerpt from his Preface to that book:
All other worries "pale in comparison to how I feel about what I call strategic inflection points. I'll describe what a strategic inflection point is a bit later in this book. For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.
"Strategic inflection points can be caused by technological change but they are more than technological change. They can be caused by competitors but they are more than just competition. They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. They build up force so insidiously that you may have a hard time even putting a finger on what has changed, yet you know that something has. Let's not mince words: A strategic inflection point can be deadly when unattended to. Companies that begin a decline as a result of its changes rarely recover their previous greatness.
"But strategic inflection points do not always lead to disaster. When the way business is being conducted changes, it creates opportunities for players who are adept at operating in the new way. This can apply to newcomers or to incumbents, for whom a strategic inflection point may mean an opportunity for a new period of growth.
"You can be the subject of a strategic inflection point but you can also be the cause of one. Intel, where I work, has been both. In the mid-eighties, the Japanese memory producers brought upon us an inflection point so overwhelming that it forced us out of memory chips and into the relatively new field of microprocessors. The microprocessor business that we have dedicated ourselves to has since gone on to cause the mother of all inflection points for other companies, bringing very difficult times to the classical mainframe computer industry. Having both been affected by strategic inflection points and having caused them, I can safely say that the former is tougher. I've grown up in a technological industry. Most of my experiences are rooted there. I think in terms of technological concepts and metaphors, and a lot of my examples in this book come from what I know. But strategic inflection points, while often brought about by the workings of technology, are not restricted to technological industries."
In Strategic Dynamics, Burgelman and Grove provide a number of case studies (e.g. of AOL, Amazon, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, and Electronic Arts), some of whose contextual material may now be somewhat dated but nonetheless offer a wealth of insights concerning the strategic dynamics when the aforementioned divergences occur. Of special interest to me is the material that suggests how to prepare for them, and, how such preparations can enable decision-makers to respond effectively to them.
This is a longer review than I normally offer. However, given the cost of the book and - more to the point - given the demands it creates for readers such as I who have had little (if any) formal business education, I thought it would be helpful to suggest the nature and extent of the authors' coverage of both the perils and the opportunities unique to information technology-driven industries as their evolution continues.
Rare: insightful and useful.......2005-08-30
As a consultant working with companies forging the next wave of information driven businesses, this book offered me truly relevant insights, and strategies on 'how to' as well as 'how not to' make the most of my clients' business opportunities. It focuses on "information-driven" industries, covering not only computer-related companies but also any industry that seeks to leverage information. Cases such as those on H.P. and the VOIP space offered fresh frameworks for thinking about the challenges and opportunties available for companies in similar business lines. It details how various forces act on and shape these different industries, what managers can do to try to understand these forces and therfore, how to optimize their environments instead of reacting to the actions of others. Do not be daunted by the 'textbook' like structure of the book. The information provided is invaluable and the cases are easily read and enjoyable.
Book Description
In an action-filled narrative, the authors tell the remarkable story of the Victorian Royal Navy's fleet of small warships used to enforce the Pax Britannica around the world for half a century. Frequently acting without orders and largely beyond the reach of Admiralty interference, the gunboats' young commanding officers intervened to stamp out the slave trade and stop local rulers from interfering with legitimate trade. Explaining that gunboats fought as far afield as Borneo, China, Japan, Jamaica, the Baltic, the Black Sea, Africa, the Great Lakes, the Red Sea, and Egypt, Antony Preston and John Major trace the history of gunboats from the time they were built to fight the Russians in the Baltic in 1850 and the early skirmishes of 1857 that led to the Second China War right through to the role they played at the outbreak of the World War I. Supported by a wealth of illustrations, this classic reference ends with a complete listing of the gunboats that served with the Royal Navy between 1855 and 1914 along with their career histories. First published more than three decades ago and long out of print, the book has been revised for this new edition and an introduction has been added by the distinguished naval historian Andrew Lambert.
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- Could have been written yesterday
- A beautiful, sad, joyous book of the human condition
- beautiful and evocative poetry
- Poetry from Sanskrit and related Prakrits
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The Cane Groves of Narmada River: Erotic Poems from Old India
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Erotic Love Poems from India: Selections from the Amarushataka
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Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India
ASIN: 0872863468 |
Book Description
Of the world's ancient poetry, that of classical India was the most vividly erotic-uninhibited, tender, sad, and joyous by turns. The poems sound as if they might have been written yesterday, although the period covered ranges from roughly 200 CE until about the eleventh century.
Customer Reviews:
Could have been written yesterday.......2002-09-17
A friend gave me a copy of this book, as I was looking for some poetry to set to music. I was inspired by the Barbara Stoller Miller translation of the Gita Govinda, pub by Columbia Univ., and my friend thought that this book pushed the envelope just a litte bit further.
The forward and introduction are very informative and make this centuries old poetry come alive in a relevant and contemporary way. The poems themselves are very, very old and Schelling's translations make them shimmer with life. If you've ever researched or read other translations of Sanskrit poetry, you will be thrilled with these translations.
As it turns out, I've received permission to use three of the poems in the book to set to music (in their original Sanskrit language).
This book offer a potent and eggshell fragile look at the range of emotions relating to love, romance and romantic longing.
Highly recommended.
A beautiful, sad, joyous book of the human condition.......1999-08-29
This is a wonderful little book of poetry. The poems of love, physical intimacy, desire, melancholy, longing and rejection in this collection date back over a millennia. A thousand years make these poem as poignant as ever. The poems in this collection are fleeting intimate glimpes into who we are as humans.
beautiful and evocative poetry.......1999-06-03
This is beautiful poetry from ancient India. It is rich and sensual, evocative and erotic, and not always in the overtly sexual way of the Kama Sutra. It engages life, society, and importantly, nature in all its lost beauty in India, the fragrant jasmine vines, the kadamba and ankota tree, the thunderstorm that releases a sudden coolness on a warm summer evening, the white cranes that cross the darkening sky. Then there is the secret rendezvous, the furtive gesture, the passionate love-making, the loss of youth, the immortal desire for fulfillment, the traveller and his betrayals, the gods engaged in their own love-making, Shiva and Parvati as the divine couple. These are timeless themes made more poignant by our desire for them today.
Poetry from Sanskrit and related Prakrits.......1998-10-09
There has been for several years a readily available book of Tamil erotic poetry The Interior Landscape which made the poetry of Southern India accessible. Now Andrew Schelling has provided a readily available text for Northern India. While the vast majority of these lyric poems are written in strictly metered quartrains, Schelling does a marvelous job of rendering the poems in free form - depending upon the images and sounds rather than the meter to translate the poetry into English (as opposed to the early stiff quatrain translations that encouraged no one to read Sanskrit/Prakrit poetry).
The selection of poetry is not "representative" of the anthologies but represent the translator's personal choice around the theme of eroticism. The translator's affinity for the selected poems shows in the excellent translations - faithful to the original text [yes I have read them in their original form] yet solid as English poetry.
Book Description
In the fiercely competitive, high-risk world of big business, comparatively few survive the arduous climb to the top and fewer still remain there. Five such extraordinary individuals now share their insights and experiences with Gretchen Morgenson, Senior Editor at Forbes magazine, in Forbes Great Minds of Business.
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Andrew Grove the vibrant head of Intel -- the company whose microprocessors power 90% of the world's computers -- is widely regarded as the best corporate manager in America.
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Fred Smith a shining example of entrepreneurship at its best, the founder of Federal Express, Inc. has built an entire industry from scratch and has physically changed the way business is done.
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Peter Lynch during his 13 years at the helm of Fidelity's Magellan Fund, he outperformed the stock market averages at least fivefold, and masterfully turned Magellan into the nation's largest mutual fund.
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Pleasant Rowland with no experience in either the marketing or the toy business, she founded Pleasant Company, an immensely profitable doll, clothing, and publishing empire that is now worth $250 million.
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Paul Volcker perhaps the most famous chairman of the Federal Reserve, he laid the foundation for the biggest wealth-creating bull market the United States has ever known.
A fascinating look at five of today's top business personalities, Forbes Great Minds of Business is also an informative and inspirational guide to what it takes to succeed and thrive in today's business world.
Customer Reviews:
GREAT IDEAS.......2000-02-22
This strong precise outlook reflects different aspects of different sides of the business spectrum. It's a truly positive look at successful businesses and the great minds behind them. Grove, Smith, Lynch, Rowland, & Volcker all share insights & directions in a volatile era. With Gretchen Morgenson, Senior Editor at Forbes magazine, letting these truly gifted individuals openly express ideas, predictions and success fortitudes. Forbes Great Minds made a lasting impression on me. It was great to listens to these fascinating people in an informal interview. To pick up one new idea and one new lesson is worth the time spent, but too generate the detailed information they provided is extraordinary.
Books:
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
- Oxford Bible Atlas
- Perennial All-Stars: The 150 Best Perennials for Great-Looking, Trouble-Free Gardens
- Raja-Yoga
- Reclaiming the Great Commission: A Practical Model for Transforming Denominations and Congregations
- Romo: My Life on the Edge--Living Dreams and Slaying Dragons
- Seize the Day (Penguin Classics)
- She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman
- Solutions for Singers: Tools for Performers and Teachers
- Something Beautiful for God
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Richest Man in Babylon
- Into a Dark Realm
- A Tenured Professor
- Control of Religious Printing in Early Stuart England
- Federico Fellini
- Notes from Underground
- Foxfire 3: Animal Care, Banjos and Dulcimers, Hide Tanning, Summer and Fall Wild Plant Foods, Butter
- Work Sharing: The Issues, Policy Options, and Prospects
- Business the Richard Branson Way: 10 Secrets of the World's Greatest Brand Builder
- Even cowgirls get the blues
High Output Management
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: How I Turned Around IBM
Swimming Across: A Memoir
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)
