Becoming the best: What you can learn from the 25 most influential leaders of our times
Reprinted with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, Jan. 20, 2004
Issue date: 2/9/04 Section: The Wharton Wire
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When Andy Grove got his PhD from the University of California , Berkeley , in 1963, he was a corporate recruiter's dream candidate. He had a number of job options, perhaps the best of which was with Bell Labs, then the Mecca of research in solid-state physics. But Grove made a different choice. Rather than head for Bell Labs, he joined Fairchild Semiconductor, a West Coast upstart, where he worked under the legendary Gordon Moore, who led the company's research operation. That was an early example of out-of-the-box thinking from Grove, who five years later left Fairchild with Moore and others to co-found Intel.
After he succeeded Moore as Intel's CEO in 1987, Grove took other steps that shunned conventional logic - perhaps most visibly during the "Intel Inside" campaign of the 1990s. Back then, the most recognized brands in the computer industry were hardware makers such as IBM or software firms like Microsoft. Intel, though it supplied more than 80% of the microprocessors to the world's computers, was hardly known outside a small band of industry insiders. Determined to change that narrow perception, Grove led Intel into an aggressive branding campaign that made the company a household name by the end of the decade. Today, as its products play an increasingly critical role in stitching together a globally networked economy, Intel has emerged as one of the world's top technology companies, with 2003 revenues of more than $30 billion.
Grove's leadership of Intel - marked as it has been by unconventional thinking, imagination and integrity - contributed this month to his being named the most influential business leader of the past 25 years by Wharton and Nightly Business Report (NBR), the most watched daily business program on U.S. television. "My life has been intertwined with Intel," Grove told Nightly Business Report co-anchor Susie Gharib. "My proudest accomplishment has been to contribute to the creation of a company that has helped put a billion PCs into people's hands."
After he succeeded Moore as Intel's CEO in 1987, Grove took other steps that shunned conventional logic - perhaps most visibly during the "Intel Inside" campaign of the 1990s. Back then, the most recognized brands in the computer industry were hardware makers such as IBM or software firms like Microsoft. Intel, though it supplied more than 80% of the microprocessors to the world's computers, was hardly known outside a small band of industry insiders. Determined to change that narrow perception, Grove led Intel into an aggressive branding campaign that made the company a household name by the end of the decade. Today, as its products play an increasingly critical role in stitching together a globally networked economy, Intel has emerged as one of the world's top technology companies, with 2003 revenues of more than $30 billion.
Grove's leadership of Intel - marked as it has been by unconventional thinking, imagination and integrity - contributed this month to his being named the most influential business leader of the past 25 years by Wharton and Nightly Business Report (NBR), the most watched daily business program on U.S. television. "My life has been intertwined with Intel," Grove told Nightly Business Report co-anchor Susie Gharib. "My proudest accomplishment has been to contribute to the creation of a company that has helped put a billion PCs into people's hands."