(2 of 13)
It is hard to define the components of greatness, but surely survival is among their number. And Andrew Grove has always been, if nothing else, a survivor. From that terrifying night (or a hundred equally terrifying nights spent eluding the Nazis), Grove, 61, has been pushed by a will to live as other men are fired by a taste for power or money. Intel, the firm that Grove built, has survived in one of the most tumultuous industries in history, emerging to become one of the most powerful companies of our age, with a stranglehold on one of the transformative technologies of the 20th century. And though Intel's spotless clean rooms, its brilliant engineers and its bunny-suited workers seem far removed from that Austrian hillside, few places better reflect the sense of urgency with which the firm operates. Grove has it boiled down to a mantra that is as fresh as it is chilling: "Only the paranoid survive."
Intel, of course, has done much more than survive. Founded in the summer of 1968 by Gordon Moore (one of the great chemists of the century) and Robert Noyce (a co-inventor of the integrated circuit), it has blossomed under Grove's leadership into the world's pre-eminent microprocessor manufacturer. From a standing start in 1981, when IBM introduced the first personal computers, they have populated the planet at an astounding rate. And of the 83 million machines sold this year, nearly 90% get their kick from an Intel chip. So do antilock brakes, Internet servers, cell phones and digital cameras. And who knows what products not yet invented will be powered by the chip 10, 20 years from now?
Intel has ceased being just a Silicon Valley wonder. It has become a weather vane for an entire digital economy, a complete ecosystem of drive manufacturers, software houses and Web programmers whose businesses depend on escalating PC growth. Because Grove and his firm control the blueprints of the PC, he is in the unique position of being able to tell customers what to do. Intel sets release dates for new chips, dictating the pace of the computer industry with the confident aplomb of fashion designers raising or lowering hemlines. It's the sort of ironfisted market grip that rarely exists outside economics textbooks: one superefficient firm with monopoly-like returns gliding past competitors and, not incidentally, racking up huge profits. (Ten thousand dollars invested in Intel on the morning of Bill Clinton's first Inauguration would be worth nearly $90,000 today.)
It has not been easy. A history of the semiconductor business reads like a chapter of the Iliad: Unisem, dead of obsolescence; Advanced Memory Systems, killed by management; Mostek, slaughtered in a Japanese RAM invasion. Intel has endured crippling chip recessions, one Federal Trade Commission probe and a nasty public flogging over its flawed Pentium chips in 1994. Now the prospect of cheaper computers using cheaper chips, not to mention the threat of economic troubles in Asia, looms. But no firm does more reliable (or profitable) work in the tiny molecular spaces that Intel has colonized. It is the essential firm of the digital age.