Only the paranoid survive

Under Andy Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest chipmaker, the fifth-most-admired company in America, and the seventh-most-profitable company among the Fortune 500. You don't achieve rankings like these unless you have mastered a rare understanding of the art of business and an unusual way with its practice.

Few CEOs can claim this level of consistent record-breaking success. Grove attributes much of this success to the philosophy and strategy he reveals in Only the Paranoid Survive - a book that is unique in leadership annals for offering a bold new business measure, and for taking the reader deep inside the workings of a major corporation.

Grove's contribution to business thinking concerns a new way of measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads - the moment when massive change occurs and all bets are off. The success you had the day before is gone, destroyed by unforeseen changes that hit like a stage-six rapid. Grove calls such moments Strategic Inflection Points, and he has lived through several. When SIPs hit, all rules of business shift fast, furiously, and forever.

SIPs can be set off by almost anything: mega-competition, an arcane change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology. Yet in the watchful leader's hand, SIPs can be an ace. Managed right, a company can turn a SIP into a positive force to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever.