Grove, Andrew S.

(1936–  ) Hungarian-American

Entrepreneur

Andrew Grove is a pioneer in the semiconductor industry and builder of Intel, the corporation whose processors now power the majority of personal computers. Grove was born András Gróf on September 2, 1936, in Budapest to a Jewish family. Grove’s family was disrupted by the German occupa-tion of Hungary later in World War II. Andrew’s father was conscripted into a work brigade and then into a Hungarian formation of the German army. Andrew and his mother, Maria, had to hide from the Nazi roundup in which many Hungarian Jews were sent to death in concentration camps.

Although the family survived and was reunited after the war, Hungary had come under Soviet control. Andrew, now 20, believed his freedom and opportunity would be very limited, so he and a friend made a dangerous border cross-ing into Austria. Grove came to the United States, where he lived with his uncle in New York and studied chemical engineering. He then earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley and became a researcher at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963 and then assistant director of devel-opment in 1967. He soon became familiar with the early work toward what would become the integrated circuit, key to the microcomputer revolution that began in the 1970s and wrote a standard textbook (Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices).

In 1968, however, he joined colleagues Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in leaving Fairchild and starting a new com-pany, Intel. Grove switched from research to management, becoming Intel’s director of operations. He established a management style that featured what he called “construc-tive confrontation”—a vigorous, objective discussion where opposing views could be aired without fear of reprisal. Crit-ics, however, sometimes characterized the confrontations as more harsh than constructive.

Grove became a formidable competitor. In the late 1970s, it was unclear whether Intel (maker of the 8008, 8080, and subsequent processors) or Motorola (with its 68000 proces-sor) would dominate the market for microprocessors to run the new desktop computers. Grove emphasized the training and deployment of a large sales force, and by the time the IBM PC debuted in 1982, it and its imitators would all be powered by Intel chips.

During the 1980s, Grove would be challenged to be adaptable when Japanese companies eroded Intel’s share of the DRAM (memory) chip market, often “dumping” prod-uct below their cost. Grove decided to get Intel out of the memory market, even though it meant downsizing the com-pany until the growing microprocessor market made up for the lost revenues. In 1987, Grove had weathered the storm and become Intel’s CEO. He summarized his experience of the rapidly changing market with the slogan “only the para-noid survive.”

During the 1990s, Intel introduced the popular Pentium line, having to overcome mathematical flaws in the first ver-sion of the chip and growing competition from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and other companies that made chips compatible with Intel’s. Grove also had to fight prostate cancer, apparently successfully, and relinquished his CEO title in 1998, remaining chairman of the board.

Through several books and numerous articles, Grove has had considerable influence on the management of modern electronics manufacturing. He has received many industry awards, including the IEEE Engineering Leadership Rec-ognition award (1987), and the AEA Medal of Achievement award (1993). In 1997, he was CEO of the Year (CEO maga-zine) and Time magazine’s Man of the Year.