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For the head of a $16.2,billion company responsible for 26,000
employees, Andrew Grove, the chief executive officer of Intel
Corporation, still has the outlook of an entrepreneur. "The
best thing is to make the right decision. Making a wrong decision
is okay too. The worst thing to do is hedge. To hedge is to fail."
Intel has never hedged. From the beginning it has forged
relentlessly into new territory. In 1968, when Gordon Moore and
Robert Noyce left the security of a large, established firm to start their own company, their plan was to manufacture a product they had yet to invent: a tiny semiconductor chip with the same capacity to store computer memory as the large magnetic cores used in mainframe computers. Under the direction of Moore and Noyce,
Intel's engineers set out to pack more and more computing power
on ever smaller chips. In 1971 they made a chip that could be
active in the operation of the computer. The microprocessor, as
it was called, is a device now ranked with McCormick's reaper
and Henry Ford's assembly line as a milestone in the history of
invention.
By compacting the power of a 3,000-cubic-foot computer into a chip smaller than a fingernail, Intel's microprocessor made possible the personal computer (PC). As the PC revolution gained momentum in the early 1980s, Robert Noyce (who died in 1990) observed that an "Intel~induced change occurred in our society."
The invention of the microprocessor was simply the beginning. Intel, the early technological leader, has made a strenuous effort to maintain its lead. With the help of Andrew Grove, a
kinetic manager and organizational mastermind, the company has managed to stay ahead of potential competitors for two decades.
Even after establishing its microprocessors, which are produced in
state-of-the-art factories around the world, as the industry standard, Intel continues to operate as if it were a research institution. In recent years its annual budget for research and development has topped $1 billion.
The heavy emphasis on research is explained by two widely quoted comments made by Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, respectively. The first, now known as "Moore's law," is that "the power and the complexity of the silicon chip will double every eighteen months." The second, explaining Intel's drive to be out in front every time the silicon chip does advance, could be called "Grove's corollary": "Only the paranoid survive."
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