Andrew Grove Quotes

Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?

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

You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events.

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.

The personal computer... went to individuals first before it went to corporations... The corporations are sitting, wishing this whole friggin' thing [Electric cars] to go away. Which is exactly what the computer companies' attitude was to personal computers.

In various bits and pieces, we have steered Intel from a start-up to one of the central companies of the information economy.

When I came to Intel, I was scared to death. I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying.

I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly

Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers.

Your career is your business, and you are its CEO.

A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.

You have no choice but to operate in a world shaped by globalization and the information revolution. There are two options: adapt or die.

Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs—we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.

And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.

Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment worth $2,000, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers.