Customer Reviews

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Business leaders tend to develop a plan and direction for their business that "feels" right and allows them to grow. Seldom do they look around to see if a much better solution is right under their noses. Having grasped the first, most obvious alternative, other alternatives fade into the background. This book suggests that companies should use discomfort with their current position to cause that look around for a better alternative. Like the boy who bent over to pick up a dime while his father looked around first and picked up twenty dollars at the same time, this gives you the chance to be many times more successful. In this book, Intel lost the handle on how to compete in commodity memory chips. An emphasis on profitability caused the organization to self-direct itself into doing more with microprocessors. Because of the inherent value-added being higher in microprocessors, this almost-accidental turn of fate was a wonderful blessing in disguise. Intel's leadership abolished the memory chip business long after the company had abandoned the business. This is one of the few books that appreciates that being satisfied with what one has today is the primary enemy of progress. The lessons of this book could be improved by further considering other ways to get organizations to notice better alternatives than just relying on fear of competition, technological trends and so forth. The concept of "strategic inflection points" developed in this book is a useful addition to the search for better alternatives. Dr. Grove made our company's list of outstanding CEOs 5 of the last 8 years for his outstanding performance in stock-price improvement. That is a powerful testament to the value of these concepts.

Complacency is one of the biggest enemies of any organization, but especially for successful ones like Intel. ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE provides two powerful observations that will help anyone who reads this book: (1) That changes are lurking out there that need immediate attention inside your organization and (2) That you must be constantly vigilant for large discontinuous changes (such as those driven by microprocessors, Intel's main product). Having the perspective of someone who has been both the beneficiary and the target of discontinuous change, Dr. Grove's lessons become all the more real. At first, I thought this book was a little overdone; but upon reflection, I feel that complacency is probably best overcome by paranoia in the absence of the management process to locate, anticipate, create and adapt to externally-driven discontinuous changes. We cite this book in our own book about how to be more successful, because we believe it is an important work. Please read this book, and take its lessons seriously. But have fun while you are being paranoid!

This book is an inspirational and thought provoking guide for those that have never been through what Grove classifies as a Strategic Inflection Point. As a leader in an industry going through massive change, I find this book to be one of the few that I will refer back to time and time again.

Andy Grove has verbalized the mindset that we must all develop to survive in the 21st Century. While his idea of constantly looking over your shoulder has always been applicable, the speed of the Internet economy requires that we do it much more frequently and penalizes us much more quickly if we do not.

Grove does a great job of showing how one man's crises is another's opporuntity and uses the term strategic inflection points to describe these periods of 10x change.

This book is a good reminder for anyone who thinks that what made them successful to this point is any guarantee that they will be successful in the future.

My feeling is I want to know more, not about the strategic inflection point and its consequences (known as well as technologial breaktrough) but on how to prepare for it, what are the signals (or noises) and what are the relationships between you as a manager (set the strategy, take decisions, resolve problems...) and you as a person highlty motivated not to say paranoid about work (time management, moving skills, relations networks...)

I was on the last chapter when I experienced something of an epiphany, namely that most people's reaction to this book is probably diametric to my own.

The book is a wonderful stimulus for contemplation; it is a lousy source of recipes. In fact, one of the major points of the book is that fundamental changes occur regularly and that such fundamental changes invalidate almost all recipes (especially the really good recipes). The other major point of the book seems to be that these fundamental changes should be the primary preoccupation of upper management.

Engineering and computer science professionals old enough to have experienced some of the case histories may react emotionally to some of the narrative. Yet the book is neither apologetics nor a historical accounting of Intel's success, and it is unfair to evaluate it in these terms.

In my opinion the most damming cretinism of the book is that it is somewhat imprecise about some of the key concepts it espouses! . For example "Strategic Inflection Points" should probably be called "Strategic Singularities". Extrapolation across inflection points can be quite accurate with the aid of higher order analysis; extrapolation across singularities is simply not possible. The later kind of event seems to be the topic of the book. The author knows enough math to understand the difference, he is merely struggling with the packaging of his ideas. This struggle extends to a few of the examples.

This is still a great book. It is no doubt being mined for it's gems by others who will repackage it's key ideas to make their own books.

I think the book is good because you can be familiar with the development history of Intel. But if you think that you can learn many critical management techniques from this book, I think that you will feel disappointed. Overall, this book is valuable to read.

Andy Grove's down-to-earth management style and no nonsence perception of today's competitive environment is evident throughout this inspiring book. Filled with practical applications that fit every business, this book is a must read!!!

Andrew Grove has clearly explained and illustrated the 10X factor and "self-inflection point"; his expertise not only took Intel ahead but also earned him the respect and admiration of different people in the industry. He was also Time magazine's Man of the Year.

THIS IS A GOOD BOOK THAT YOU WILL REFER TO EVERYDAY. AS A MANAGER OF A MID SIZED DISTRIBUTION COMPANY WE FOUND THIS USEFUL AND INTERESTING. OUR MANAGERS ARE REQUESTED TO READ THIS. ANOTHER GOOD BOOK IS THE 2000 PERCENT SOLOUTION WHICH CAN TAKE YOU TO THE NEXT LEVEL AND HELP YOU SOLVE AND CURE STALLED THINKING, WHICH PLAGUES US ALL IN BUSINESS.