Advise that launched the 'Intel Inside' brand

This advise is too precious to remain buried in a tome.

Just a small preface: This advise came from Professor Henry Reiling of Harward Business School. This piece of advise led Dennis Carter to join Intel. Dennis Carter is primarily responsible for the 'Intel Inside' brand.

When you look for your first job find a job where nobody knows exactly what you're supposed to be doing. If they don't know what you're supposed to be doing, they won't know what you are not supposed to be doing. As a result, you can do anything you want, and you can take risks.

This is extracted from Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow.

Photo courtesy: Margarit Ralev

The Story of Invention of Microprocessor

As you might very well imagine, encountering the word "serendipity" when I am reading a book gets me all excited. More fodder for my blog!

Actually, this one is in the domain of technology, something one would not generally associate with serendipity. Discoveries, yes; business strategies, yes; inventions, no. You do not invent something by accident. Or so you would think.

Here is an extract from Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow

The microprocessor was invented by Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff, and here we see serendipity at work with a vengeance. A Japanese manufacturer of desk top printer-calculator named Busicom was planning a complicated new product. Attracted by Noyce's reputation, they approached Intel with a contract that called for a set of twelve chips for their machine. The assignment to design the set of chips was given to Hoff, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford when Intel hired him in 1969. ... Hoff developed an elegant solution. Instead of twelve chips, he would do the job with four. The calculator would be supplied with one memory chip, one chip for storage registers, and a third to hold the program. The fourth was a "strikingly new design" from Hoff: "a general-purpose process circuit that could be programmed for a variety of jobs, including the performance of arithmatic in Busicom's machines." ... Unlike the EPROM, the utility of the microprocessor was not immediately apparent. Intel came close to giving the rights of its design to Busincom for a few thousand dollars. For over a decade, the microprocessor Hoff invented found a variety of niche markets. Only with the coming of the age of the personal computer in the 1980s did it become apparent that this device was worth tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollar. Its value today is incalculable. The world of the twenty-first century is unimaginable without it.

Now I do not believe for a moment that but for Hoff we would be still stuck in a non-microprocessor world. Someone else would have invented it. But what is remarkable is that even in a company teeming with technical brilliance, such as Intel, it took over a decade for them to recognise the future.

Picture courtesy: Ádám Bálint

Not fair!

Look I know they did not seek the Nobel Prize. History has judged them favorably and they gained the deserved fame while they were alive (which cannot be said of all who deserve). But I cannot help thinking, "Not fair!"

In 1959 Robert Noyce came up with the design of Integrated circuit. It was silicon based. Independent of him Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments designed a Germanium based Integrated Circuit. Silicon is obviously a better solution - it is called The Silicon Valley, isn't it? Not Germanium Valley!

Kilby was awarded the Nobel prize in the year 2000. Noyce did not. Why? Because he died in the year 1990. Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously.

Who can you blame? The Nobel committee surely had their reasons to delay the award. But I can't help thinking: It took the Nobel committee upward of 40 years to realize the importance of Integrated Chip?

In any case, Noyce (along with Gordon Moore, yeah the same one who gave the Moore's Law) went on to create Intel. Contrary to popular belief, Andy Grove was not instrumental in establishing Intel. He joined the company as the first employee. That he took Intel to great heights is a different story Andy Grove: The life and Times of An American.

Picture courtesy: Ádám Bálint

5 Achievements That India Really Needs

Piggy-back Oscars and Beauty crowns ... is this India's claim to fame.?

You may disagree, but I think this is a shame (Wow! Poetry: Fame ... Shame!)

Now here's what I would like to see India /Indians to achieve...

Pot full of Olympic golds in every Olympics till it ceases to be front page news any more.

At least one Fields Medal in the next 5 years. (I could even settle for a Millennium Prize or two)

A Nobel prize in any one of the sciences every few years till it becomes a habit.

An Oscar for a Mainstream Bollywood masala movie.

At least one world class software product or application. Just to make myself clear here ... No! Infosys is not a software product! I am looking for something like MS Office, SAP, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Linux, ... I could go on and on. Let's say something like Hotmail.

A technology company that rivals Apple or Intel in innovation.

I think I will be satisfied with 5 :-)

Would you like to add to this list? Name your country and go right ahead.


Picture courtesy: Svilen Mushkatov

Stop Reading Management Books

At least that is the message that first came to me as I was reading Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense by Jeffery Pfeffer & Robery I. Sutton.

Of course that is not the purpose of the book. It puts forward yet another 'paradigm' - Evidence Based Management. But read through the book and you will see management myths exploding.

The premises of Hard Facts ... is quite simple - every best practice is context based. It is necessary to study the context before application. Use commonsense. But do you think management best seller would say this.

Hard fact ... discusses some well-known management practices in a very balanced manner. The positives and the negatives are discussed and then the authors offer their understanding.

Here are some of the excerpts from the book ... I bet the first thing you would do after reading the excerpts is to buy the book.

The excerpts ...

"Take incentives, the cornerstone of so many celebrated management practices. Do you always need money and other bribes to get people to act the right way? Are people who get more of these goodies always the best human beings? These two beliefs are rarely questioned when applied to work settings."

"... for most jobs in most organizations, assessing talent and ability is fraught with error and bias. Most dimensions of work performance are not as objective as how well someone can pitch, hit a ball, or throw a discuss."

"Variable Pay = Pay Dispersion = Lower Performance"

"Attributing Intel's success to its own strategic decisions is, however, partly incorrect. ... Intel was given the chance to move into microprocessors largely as a result of a strategic decision by IBM to outsource the manufacture of microprocessors for IBM PC, a lucky break that Intel was smart enough to capitalize on but that had little to do with any planning, rational analysis, or strategy formation by Intel's senior team."

By the way, the authors are professors at Stanford. They also authored The Knowing-Doing Gap.

Note: This is the second time I am using A. Kratzenberg's picture. See the gallery for more photographs.