Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American - Hardcover

Tedlow, Richard S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591841399 ISBN 13: 9781591841395

Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover, 2006

Synopsis

Traces the life and career of the enigmatic former CEO of Intel, drawing on private papers and interviews with his closest friends and associates to discuss such topics as the persecution he survived as a Jewish Hungarian in the 1930s, his relationships with such figures as Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, and his management talents.

About this title

About the Author

Richard S. Tedlow is the Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the author of Giants of Enterprise (one of BusinessWeekÂ’s ten best books of 2001) and The Watson Dynasty.

From the Back Cover

Advanced Praise :

"Andy Grove is everything Richard Tedlow describes in this definitive biography. Andy defines leadership in the modern age and Tedlow captures it perfectly."
-ERIC SCHMIDT, CEO, Google Inc.

"Tedlow's Andy Grove is a tour de force. You must read this. It's the extraordinary, warm, and detailed story of Andy Grove -immigration, innovation, and leadership."
-JOHN DOERR, one of the nation's leading venture capitalists

"Andy recognized the future and helped make it happen. I have benefited from his insight and skills over the years as have millions of consumers throughout the world."
-MICHAEL DELL, chairman, Dell, Inc.

"Like Astaire and Rogers, Lennon and McCartney, or Tracy and Hepburn, Grove and Tedlow are the perfect match. Tedlow is a master craftsman-great words, great wit. This book transcends the 'learn from the successful CEO' genre just as Intel's performance under Grove transcended the normal corporate landscape."
-ROBERT J. DOLAN, dean, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

"Andy Grove's story will resonate with anyone who has dreamed of a better life. Through sheer hard work and a willingness to embrace the future, be it a new country or a new technology, he helped build a company that made computers a part of our everyday life."
-FRANK LOWY, chairman, The Westfield Group

"This page-turning drama, told by a master biographer, combines both the grand narrative and the fascinating details of Andy Grove's life. Perhaps many already know that Grove is the greatest American business leader of his generation, but everyone will be enthralled by the twists, turns, surprises, and triumphs of Tedlow's true story."
-REED HUNDT, former chairman, Federal Communications Commission

Reviews

In this highly readable but deliberately paced biography, Harvard professor and historian Tedlow (Giants of Enterprise) makes a case for Andy Grove (b. 1936) taking a place alongside Benjamin Franklin as a quintessential American businessman and citizen. Indeed, Grove rose from being a penniless Hungarian refugee to an engineer hired as Intel's third employee, eventually heading the corporation—"one of the most profitable companies in all of business history." Tedlow builds the book around a year-by-year, blow-by-blow account of Intel's ups and downs, punctuated by Grove's contemporaneous musings, drawn from his private notebooks. Following the company over the rocky patches in its trajectory from semiconductors to microprocessors, Tedlow situates Intel among its industry partners and competitors. Sometimes, there's too much context: the author conveys a good deal about Hungary's modern political history and scrutinizes every available scrap of information about his subject's childhood. There are also 20 pages on the 1994 Pentium "floating point flaw" debacle and 15 pages on Grove's battle with prostate cancer. But as a biography of Intel as well as a primer on Grove's writings and management philosophy, the book is truly illuminating. In offering a closeup portrait of this prickly but gifted executive, Tedlow helps us understand why Grove's tenure as Intel's CEO "was so spectacularly successful." (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Tedlow, a business historian and academic, presents the story of Andy Grove, a penniless Hungarian immigrant who became an icon of twentieth-century corporate America. Grove joined Intel in 1968 at its founding, and while he was CEO from 1987 to 1998, "market capitalization increased from $4.3 billion to $197.6 billion, a compound annual growth rate of 42% and a total increase of almost 4,500%." Grove led the company with Intel's 386 microprocessor, which became the industry standard. Tedlow describes Grove, Time magazine's 1997 man of the year, as an extraordinary manager, author, and significant player in the fights against prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease. With unique access to Grove and Intel's internal resources and documents, Tedlow claims objectivity, telling the truth as he sees it in this laudatory narrative, although he also confirms his close ties to the subject. In comparing Grove to Benjamin Franklin (among other notables), Tedlow tells us that the two share the traits of "care and skill at image management." Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591841399
• ISBN 13: 9781591841395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 576