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

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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. (Aug.)