Creating the Digital Future: The Secrets of Consistent Innovation at Intel [Hardcover]

Albert Y.c. Yu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 1998

Nowhere are the perils of success more threatening than in the fast-paced personal computer and semiconductor markets. Here today's exciting innovation quickly becomes yesterday's news. In this unforgiving climate, Intel Corporation has established itself as the undisputed trailblazer of microprocessor and silicon technologies. What exactly are the secrets of consistent innovation at Intel?

Top microprocessor expert and Intel insider Albert Yu reveals that the key lies in Intel's ability to reinvent itself. In this fascinating and instructive book, Dr. Yu shows how Intel "obsoletes" its own products and relentlessly raises the bar to the next level. He brings the reader into the results-oriented, hyper-innovative, creative Intel culture that thrives on fresh ideas, risk-taking, and learning from failure. Yu shows how volume is a key to profits and describes how interactions between customers, marketers, and engineers often generate sparks that spawn great products. Above all, Dr. Yu demonstrates that Intel has prevailed by learning lessons from its mistakes in fierce, bitter competition with Motorola and Sun's SPARC for strategic leadership of the high-technology world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Creating the Digital Future, Albert Yu, senior vice president of Intel's Microprocessor Products Group, reflects on the history and culture of Intel and shows how the company maintains the mindset of a 30-year-old start-up. Starting with an analysis of Moore's Law (Gordon Moore was a cofounder of Intel), which states that the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip doubles every 18 to 24 months, Yu traces Intel's fast track into the digital world--past, present, and future. Occasionally the book cheerleads Intel's accomplishments and reads as if it were written for insiders and friends. And while Yu reveals nothing new about Intel or the art and science of management, what comes across as most remarkable is Yu himself--his enthusiasm and openness to new ideas might make you wish he was your boss. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly

The invention of the microprocessor at Intel in 1971, as Yu tells it, was instigated by a customer request and represented a leap into the unknown. Since then, he writes, the California-based microchip giant has tried to make "obsolete" its own products with better ones before competitors do it first. While Intel senior v-p Yu offers details from the front of Intel's furious chip-building competition with Motorola, IBM and Sun Microsystems and explains how Intel's breakthroughs have affected the computer and electronics industries, most of this concise report is a savvy, straightforward primer for managers, business and computing professionals. While some business maxims are peculiar to high-tech (take Moore's "law," which states that the "number of transistors on a semiconductor chip doubles approximately every 18 to 24 months"), many of Yu's recommendations are drawn from business basics: focus on delivering measurable results; nurture a creative, risk-taking atmosphere; provide nonstop on-the-job training; develop a cohesive product line. Yu does, however, flesh out each strategy with pertinent case examples, making his manual a useful springboard for those designing or developing high-tech products in many fields. Editor, Robert Wallace.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684839881
• ISBN-13: 978-0684839882
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,588,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very easy to read and insightful on how Intel works, August 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating the Digital Future: The Secrets of Consistent Innovation at Intel (Hardcover)

This book is a very easy to read and insightful description of how products innovate at Intel. The book also conveys accurately the Intel Value and culture that the Intel employees experience everyday at their work. This book is an excellent source of info on how Intel really works