Andy Grove on business transition

Q: When a company goes through these periods of transition - I've heard you refer to it as going through the "valley of death."  Explain that metaphor. 

Andy Grove: I kinda have this little movie playing in my mind of people riding down one side of a mountain.  They know that there is another mountain out there someplace that they want to get up on top of, but they are stuck in the middle.  Think of a hazy Death Valley where you can't really make out the two sides.  You kind of ride in a particular direction and you start to get concerned about whether you know where you are going.  And in that situation the leader of the group of riders becomes far more important than at other times.  Because people look to him to stick his neck out and decide on a direction - which they have to decide, because if they don't they will start breaking up and debating which way they're gonna go and they will die of thirst.  The demand on this mystical leadership ability to drive toward a relatively ill-defined destination - and the need to instill conviction in the group to keep going - is greatest when you're in the middle of that valley, and you know that you can't go back where you came from, but you can't really see the other side that clearly.

~ Andy Grove, "Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance," Wired, June 1, 2001

Andy Grove on the genomic revolution (2001)

This particular once-a-half-century change [the Internet] is due to the combination of the microprocessor and connectedness.  And the most interesting aspect is that the change hasn't nearly run its course yet.  We are likely to see layered on top of it a change of comparable significance in the area of genetics, molecular biology, and the like, which would absolutely be inconceivable without very powerful and highly connected and available computers.  The impact of that change on drug development, health care, and human life is difficult to imagine.  But is it part of the computing/connectedness change? Or should we think of it as a new change unto itself?  The reason I ask is that, if this change happens as extensively as some people think it might, the consequences could be far more important than the enabler.  Compared with directly altering life and death, computers and the Internet don't seem like such a big deal.  But without the computers and connectedness, the genetics/molecular biology stuff would never get off the ground.

~ Andy Grove, "Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance," Wired, June 1, 2001

Andy Grove on business survival

Success breeds complacency.  Complacency breeds failure.  Only the paranoid survive.

~ Andy Grove

Andy Grove on when a company begins to decline

There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance.  Miss that moment - and you start to decline.

~ Andy Grove

Andy Grove on corporate transformation

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin.  Methods have to change.  Focus has to change.  Values have to change.  The sum total of those changes is transformation.

~ Andy Grove

Andy Grove on crisis and business

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them, great companies are improved by them.

~ Andy Grove