Differences between Intel founders inspired innovation
As a journalist, Michael Malone spent over two decades following Silicon Valley during possibly its most exciting years. He saw up close the birth and growth of some of the companies that define technology the way we know it today, including HP and Apple.
The Pulitzer
Prize nominated writer is now an adjunct professor at Santa Clara
University and an associate fellow of the Said Business School at the
University of Oxford, having also dabbled in television along the
way. Malone has authored over 15 books on business and technology,
including the bestselling The Virtual Corporation, Bill and Dave and
The Future Arrived Yesterday.
In his latest book, The Intel Trinity, Malone goes into his days as a reporter following the chip maker to tell the story of the company's early days. He looks at how the three disparate founders played off their diverse personalities to build what he calls 'the world's most important company'.
Malone talks to Corporate Dossier about how the Intel founders balanced out the complex relationship among themselves and how this worked to the company's advantage. Edited excerpts:
What's the best way to describe the relationship between the Intel founders?
Complex. Every time I thought I understood the relationship between (Robert) Noyce, (Andy) Grove and (Gordon) Moore, they did something or said something that made me rethink my understanding of them.
You say that the founders found a perfect balance among themselves without which the company would never have reached the level it did. How so?
Sure. I've created a little bit of controversy with the name of the book, 'Trinity' —not 'Trilogy' or 'Trio' or even 'Troika' —because I wanted to play off of Christian theology: Noyce as the Father Figure, Moore (or more precisely, Moore's Law) as the Holy Spirit, and Grove as the difficult, but ultimately Triumphant Son. I did that because it captured both the personalities of the three men and the way they fit together.
Noyce was the most charismatic figure in Silicon Valley history (even more than Steve Jobs — I knew both men). He was the gambler, the risk-taker. And he was the very essence of cool. Moore is the ultimate scientist-engineer: supremely rational and empirical. To him, all problems are equations. And Grove is passionate, aggressive and ultra-competitive — the very essence of a hot personality.
Noyce gives Intel its vision; he is Mr Outside. Grove, at least at the beginning, kept Intel running at top speed; he was Mr Inside. And Moore kept the company honest and committed to reality, neither spinning off with Rob's dreams nor mired in Andy's grinding dayto-day focus.
How did the diversity among them shape the future of the company?
Intel was, and remains, the high church of Moore's Law. For fifty years, it has been dedicated to maintaining the Law's blisteringly fast and relentless pace. The modern world now moves to the pace of Moore's Law — which is why, in my subtitle to the book, I call Intel the 'world's most important company'.
To accomplish that, and to maintain it over the course of a half-century, required Noyce's vision and risk-taking, Grove's relentless drive and competitiveness, and Moore himself, who understands the implications of his Law more than anyone.
How did the three founders have an impact on Intel's culture, and does that culture still sustain today?
Thirty years ago, as a young reporter, I hated covering Intel. It was arrogant, hyper-competitive and not a lot of fun. Before I became a journalist, I worked at Hewlett-Packard under its two founders, arguably the most enlightened company in history. HP was family, beer busts, and decency.
By comparison, Intel was shouting, competitiveness and intellectual arrogance. That was Andy's influence. It took me years to appreciate that mixed into this was also ruthless honesty and a commitment to always do the right thing. That was Andy too. Rob's influence?
The fact that such a serious, empirical, and seemingly unimaginative company could occasionally take such astounding, even existential, risks is pure Noyce and that Intel could recover from some of those mistakes, where other companies died, is pure Grove. Moore? The confidence that there were technical answers to every obstacle, if you only had the intellectual honesty to find them.
How did the differences between the trio encourage the innovation that happened at Intel?
Moore's Law isn't really a Law, but a compact between the semiconductor industry and the rest of the world to double chip performance every couple of years. In other words, Moore's Law isn't inevitable, it has to be clawed out of the future. If only Noyce had been at Intel, it likely wouldn't have lasted long, especially at the beginning, when the company suffered low yields on its innovative first products. It likely would have gone out of business, or just become a brilliant design shop.
If Intel had been only Grove, it would have remained a memory chip company, and died with its US counterparts in the mid-1980s when the Japanese attacked that market. It was Noyce's secret skunkworks inside his own company — i.e., that he hid from Grove — that created the microprocessor and Intel's (and the world's) destiny. I don't believe Intel would have ever existed under Moore.
Can a volatile relationship between the founders work out to the advantage of the company?
Absolutely. I think the combination of the 'perfect' friendship-partnership of Hewlett and Packard, and the 'lone wolf' image of Steve Jobs has deluded us into believing a false image of leadership.
In reality, as researchers have learned in recent years, the best teams consist of the most diverse possible members in terms of personalities, perspectives and experience -- and Intel, founded by the sons of a California sheriff, an Iowa preacher and a Hungarian refugee, fits that perfectly.
The real challenge is managing such a diverse group and not let them explode in blame, feuds and acrimony. That takes great management. But what do you do when there is no manager, as with a founding team like the Intel Trinity. The answer, for Intel at least, was they had a common goal: their commitment to using Moore's Law to create a great company. That enabled the three to, when necessary, swallow their pride or forgive and forget.
How did Intel manage to keep innovating rapidly to keep pace with the outside world while keeping things under control internally?
Andy Grove was the key, with the help of a series of superb operations people, including Les Vadasz and future CEO/Chairman Craig Barrett. Intel's commitment to Moore's Law forced it to perpetually innovate at a rate probably unknown in business history.
HP, GE, Apple and others had periods of incredible, category-creating innovation, but no company has ever done what Intel has done for fifty years: take one technology, improve it a million-fold and then build tens of billions of products and deliver them to the entire world. That has required an internal culture that is serious, technologically unequalled and totally committed to Moore's Law.
Does it always work? No, Intel has made a number of huge, nearly existential mistakes, from briefly losing the race to Motorola, to most recently, the huge mistake of chasing networks and the dying PC business rather than mobile. That has cost Intel five years of growth, and it is only now recovering.
The key to Intel is not that it doesn't make mistakes, but that it is better than any company I've ever seen at recovering from those mistakes. This is the rare example of a giant company that can still learn.
Is it important or necessary for founders of a company to be friends?
No. Frankly I think it's better for them to be respectful acquaintances. You don't want enemies as partners, of course, because they'll undermine and sabotage each other's efforts —at the cost of the company. But friends too can be problematic — often putting each other's interests ahead of the larger organization.
Hewlett and Packard's friendship is rightly celebrated, but it was also very dangerous. The loss of one could have meant the loss of both. And what if both hadn't proven to be great businessmen? Having known them, I can't imagine Dave firing Bill, or vice-versa.
A far better combination was Omidyar and Skoll at eBay, or Brin and Paige at Google, Zuckerberg and Sanders at Facebook—pairs of leaders who respect each other's skills, especially the complementary ones, and keep their relationship at a business, not a personal, level. At Intel, Noyce and Moore were very close — at work, but they rarely hung out after hours.
The same was true with Grove and Moore. And, ironically, while Noyce and Grove didn't get along professionally, their families sometimes vacationed together. Like I said at the beginning: their relationships were complicated. And in that complication, I think, can be found their greatness.
In his latest book, The Intel Trinity, Malone goes into his days as a reporter following the chip maker to tell the story of the company's early days. He looks at how the three disparate founders played off their diverse personalities to build what he calls 'the world's most important company'.
Malone talks to Corporate Dossier about how the Intel founders balanced out the complex relationship among themselves and how this worked to the company's advantage. Edited excerpts:
What's the best way to describe the relationship between the Intel founders?
Complex. Every time I thought I understood the relationship between (Robert) Noyce, (Andy) Grove and (Gordon) Moore, they did something or said something that made me rethink my understanding of them.
You say that the founders found a perfect balance among themselves without which the company would never have reached the level it did. How so?
Sure. I've created a little bit of controversy with the name of the book, 'Trinity' —not 'Trilogy' or 'Trio' or even 'Troika' —because I wanted to play off of Christian theology: Noyce as the Father Figure, Moore (or more precisely, Moore's Law) as the Holy Spirit, and Grove as the difficult, but ultimately Triumphant Son. I did that because it captured both the personalities of the three men and the way they fit together.
Noyce was the most charismatic figure in Silicon Valley history (even more than Steve Jobs — I knew both men). He was the gambler, the risk-taker. And he was the very essence of cool. Moore is the ultimate scientist-engineer: supremely rational and empirical. To him, all problems are equations. And Grove is passionate, aggressive and ultra-competitive — the very essence of a hot personality.
Noyce gives Intel its vision; he is Mr Outside. Grove, at least at the beginning, kept Intel running at top speed; he was Mr Inside. And Moore kept the company honest and committed to reality, neither spinning off with Rob's dreams nor mired in Andy's grinding dayto-day focus.
How did the diversity among them shape the future of the company?
Intel was, and remains, the high church of Moore's Law. For fifty years, it has been dedicated to maintaining the Law's blisteringly fast and relentless pace. The modern world now moves to the pace of Moore's Law — which is why, in my subtitle to the book, I call Intel the 'world's most important company'.
To accomplish that, and to maintain it over the course of a half-century, required Noyce's vision and risk-taking, Grove's relentless drive and competitiveness, and Moore himself, who understands the implications of his Law more than anyone.
How did the three founders have an impact on Intel's culture, and does that culture still sustain today?
Thirty years ago, as a young reporter, I hated covering Intel. It was arrogant, hyper-competitive and not a lot of fun. Before I became a journalist, I worked at Hewlett-Packard under its two founders, arguably the most enlightened company in history. HP was family, beer busts, and decency.
By comparison, Intel was shouting, competitiveness and intellectual arrogance. That was Andy's influence. It took me years to appreciate that mixed into this was also ruthless honesty and a commitment to always do the right thing. That was Andy too. Rob's influence?
The fact that such a serious, empirical, and seemingly unimaginative company could occasionally take such astounding, even existential, risks is pure Noyce and that Intel could recover from some of those mistakes, where other companies died, is pure Grove. Moore? The confidence that there were technical answers to every obstacle, if you only had the intellectual honesty to find them.
How did the differences between the trio encourage the innovation that happened at Intel?
Moore's Law isn't really a Law, but a compact between the semiconductor industry and the rest of the world to double chip performance every couple of years. In other words, Moore's Law isn't inevitable, it has to be clawed out of the future. If only Noyce had been at Intel, it likely wouldn't have lasted long, especially at the beginning, when the company suffered low yields on its innovative first products. It likely would have gone out of business, or just become a brilliant design shop.
If Intel had been only Grove, it would have remained a memory chip company, and died with its US counterparts in the mid-1980s when the Japanese attacked that market. It was Noyce's secret skunkworks inside his own company — i.e., that he hid from Grove — that created the microprocessor and Intel's (and the world's) destiny. I don't believe Intel would have ever existed under Moore.
Can a volatile relationship between the founders work out to the advantage of the company?
Absolutely. I think the combination of the 'perfect' friendship-partnership of Hewlett and Packard, and the 'lone wolf' image of Steve Jobs has deluded us into believing a false image of leadership.
In reality, as researchers have learned in recent years, the best teams consist of the most diverse possible members in terms of personalities, perspectives and experience -- and Intel, founded by the sons of a California sheriff, an Iowa preacher and a Hungarian refugee, fits that perfectly.
The real challenge is managing such a diverse group and not let them explode in blame, feuds and acrimony. That takes great management. But what do you do when there is no manager, as with a founding team like the Intel Trinity. The answer, for Intel at least, was they had a common goal: their commitment to using Moore's Law to create a great company. That enabled the three to, when necessary, swallow their pride or forgive and forget.
How did Intel manage to keep innovating rapidly to keep pace with the outside world while keeping things under control internally?
Andy Grove was the key, with the help of a series of superb operations people, including Les Vadasz and future CEO/Chairman Craig Barrett. Intel's commitment to Moore's Law forced it to perpetually innovate at a rate probably unknown in business history.
HP, GE, Apple and others had periods of incredible, category-creating innovation, but no company has ever done what Intel has done for fifty years: take one technology, improve it a million-fold and then build tens of billions of products and deliver them to the entire world. That has required an internal culture that is serious, technologically unequalled and totally committed to Moore's Law.
Does it always work? No, Intel has made a number of huge, nearly existential mistakes, from briefly losing the race to Motorola, to most recently, the huge mistake of chasing networks and the dying PC business rather than mobile. That has cost Intel five years of growth, and it is only now recovering.
The key to Intel is not that it doesn't make mistakes, but that it is better than any company I've ever seen at recovering from those mistakes. This is the rare example of a giant company that can still learn.
Is it important or necessary for founders of a company to be friends?
No. Frankly I think it's better for them to be respectful acquaintances. You don't want enemies as partners, of course, because they'll undermine and sabotage each other's efforts —at the cost of the company. But friends too can be problematic — often putting each other's interests ahead of the larger organization.
Hewlett and Packard's friendship is rightly celebrated, but it was also very dangerous. The loss of one could have meant the loss of both. And what if both hadn't proven to be great businessmen? Having known them, I can't imagine Dave firing Bill, or vice-versa.
A far better combination was Omidyar and Skoll at eBay, or Brin and Paige at Google, Zuckerberg and Sanders at Facebook—pairs of leaders who respect each other's skills, especially the complementary ones, and keep their relationship at a business, not a personal, level. At Intel, Noyce and Moore were very close — at work, but they rarely hung out after hours.
The same was true with Grove and Moore. And, ironically, while Noyce and Grove didn't get along professionally, their families sometimes vacationed together. Like I said at the beginning: their relationships were complicated. And in that complication, I think, can be found their greatness.
By Priyanka
Sangani,
ET CD140829
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