|
Andy Grove
Former chairman and CEO, Intel
By now most people in Silicon Valley know this is my mantra, but I'm not sure they know what it means. It isn't as crazy as it sounds; it's really a corollary to Murphy's Law, which states that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. If that's so, then the paranoid have an advantage. I was always amused at how the phrase caught on -- and who wanted to be considered even more paranoid than I am. Once, when I was receiving an honor at Harvard University, Bill Gates was saying some nice things about me on a video and said he had only one quibble: that he was the most paranoid.I think the rule is more relevant than ever today. The U.S. economy is getting hollowed out, industry by industry. Health care is about to become one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and yet for the most part it's an industry that has never taken advantage of digital technology. Our country's infrastructure is fragile, even precarious. Just look at New Orleans. So I would say, Duh. We'd better be paranoid. I know I am. But not about Intel. One of the benefits of no longer being the company's chief "paranoid" officer is that someone else gets to do that now. |
|
NEXT» |