Product Description

Top business journalist Tim Jackson offers the gripping story of Intel, a company that rose to dominance through technological innovation, and maintained its leadership against competitors through aggressive marketing, tough business tactics, and liberal use of legal firepower. Web site promo.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1083705 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 424 pages

Amazon.com Review
Eighty percent of today's desktop computers operate on chips produced by Intel Corporation, which is now a more profitable company than the top 10 PC makers combined. But just how did the company, under CEO Andrew Grove, become so powerful? And what does its position mean to those who depend upon it? By combining public records, private documents, and interviews with more than 100 of those who know the company best, Financial Times columnist Tim Jackson has produced the fascinating, definitive story: Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company.

From Library Journal
Hard-driven CEO and chairman Grove has dominated Intel since shortly after its founding in 1968. He focused the company on setting goals and achieving results. As Jackson, a columnist for the Financial Times, points out in his excellent book, Grove was also largely responsible for Intel's arrogance toward customers, aggression toward competitors, and pettiness toward employees. Intel's success came from being on the cutting edge of semiconductor technology with innovative products like the DRAM, EPROM, and microprocessor. Nevertheless, lack of foresight lost Intel its memory-chip business, and only a last-minute marketing effort saved its dominant position in microprocessors. The author draws on interviews as well as published and unpublished sources to produce this well-written and -documented business and technical history. Highly recommended for all libraries as a window into one of the world's most important companies and its methods.?Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A lively, accessible, and informative overview of Intel Corp., the Silicon Valley phenomenon that bestrides the widening world of semiconductor devices like a colossus. With but minimal cooperation from the company, Financial Times columnist Jackson (The Next Battleground, 1992) was obliged to rely on interviews, court papers, and on-the-record material to piece together its story. He nonetheless makes a fine job of reconstructing the high-tech enterprise's history, from its 1968 founding by Robert Noyce (co-creator of the integrated circuit) and Gordon Moore through the present day, when Pentium series chips dominate the market for PC microprocessors. Along the way, the author details how Intel achieved and sustained a leadership position by means of technical innovation, painstaking attention to fabrication techniques (which now permit millions of active transistor elements to be deposited on substrates measured in microns), the capacity to commit billions of dollars to capital investment during good times and bad, and a willingness to play rough with key employees who defect, as well as potentially troublesome rivals. Under the focused direction of CEO Andrew Grove (a refugee from Communist Hungary whose managerial style is reflected in the title of his 1996 book, Only the Paranoid Survive), Jackson shows, the transnational company does not shy from using litigation to gain or retain a competitive edge. Nor, he notes, does Intel like to admit error, as attested to by its attempt to stonewall the 1994 disclosure that the first Pentium chips might make long-division mistakes once in every nine billion calculations. Even so, the secretive and authoritarian outfit continues to be immensely profitable. A first-rate anecdotal briefing on a consequential supplier of small wonders that are at the heart of a latter-day industrial revolution. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Greate insight into a fascinating company
As a former Intel employee, I feel that Tim Jackson got an in-depth understanding of the dual face that Intel has. On one hand, it is one of the most exciting companies in the world today - full of clever people with bright ideas, who create one of the most exciting products in today's world. Intel gives its employees the opportunity to be an active part of the technologic revolution. It also made many employees rich by giving them stock options (although it was much less generous than other companies in the high-tech business, like Microsoft). On the other hand, if the big companies of today are like independent countries, then Intel resembles the former Soviet Union. The walls at Intel's sites are all covered with propaganda posters about how Intel is "A great place to work", and how "Intel culture" makes sure that it will always be so (pretty much like "the communist heaven"...). Employees get regular lessons in "Intel Culture" and its principles - like "Constructive Confrontation" "One on One" "Intel Management by Objective" - teaching them how these great principles make sure that their voice is heard, that they will have an open door in the upper management, and they will be able to express their ideas freely. In practice, however, employees soon find out that the system's main purpose is to provide management a tight control over the ordinary engineers, and make sure that everybody "stays in line", and avoid criticism. The hierarchical system of "key results" and periodical reviews makes sure that any manager would be able to get rid of "trouble makers" reporting to him as soon as possible. As a result, internal politics and the pressure on the workers constantly grow. (In my opinion, this is the reason why Intel couldn't convert its great success in building processors to any other field - like software development or networking products - despite huge investments in these fields). It is amazing that Mr. Jackson had never been an Inter employee himself - as his book gives a fair and accurate description of what it is like inside Intel - with the good and the bad parts.

Engaging, with a nice sharp edge
This is a highly engaging book. As a former Intel customer, now in recovery, I feel that this book can give the general audience an authentic taste both of the history of ingenuity and energy inside Intel, and of their sometimes incredible and insufferable arrogance.

I especially appreciated the enlightening and lively accounts of Dov Frohman's discovery and exploitation of floating gate technology for EPROMs, and of Tim May's discovery of alpha particle-induced errors.

It is unfortunate that Jackson did not relate the Intel / Nippon Steel flash memory production fiasco. This might easily rank #2 (behind Pentium FDIV) on the arrogance-toward-customers list, and is a pile of muck very ripe for a good raking.

The book seems nearly deserving of a 10, but some history, particularly from the 8008 and 8080 eras, did not quite match my recollection, and might have benefitted from more extensive fact-checking.

Best book to read for engrs contemplating joining Intel
If you are an engineer contemplating joining Intel read this book. You will have one of two reactions afterwards. You will be even more enthusiastic about joining a no nonsense, very well run company, or you will run like hell away from Intel. Take it from me, an Intel newbee, this book lets you know what Intel is all about.