Intel Corp. Chair Speaks at Business School

Intel Corporation Chair Andy Grove told graduating students from the Harvard Business School about choices in life yesterday, demonstrating his points with some lessons from his own.

The Hungarian immigrant, best-selling author and guru of the Internet economy, recalled his days in Budapest, where he would ride the tram aimlessly across the city.

"One thing about the tram always fascinated me," Grove said. "The track separated into directions and were controlled electronically by the driver. If the train switched tracks, it would change direction and depart significantly from its original path."

The choice the conductor made would take the train further and further from other directions he might have chosen, but the conductor could never look back.

Grove's life, he said, was a series of similar choices.

Grove was a student in Hungary in 1956 when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and chaos ensued. His first real choice was whether to leave for America.

"You didn't know what was happening one block away from you," Grove said. "You would hear about people getting shot, people getting tortured and killed. I fantasized about leaving but never did--I just stayed in my apartment."

It was not until his relative burst into his door, panting about students down the street being rounded up by the Red Army, that Grove knew he had to make an immediate decision.

"I faced unknown dangers if I left, I faced known dangers if I stayed," Grove said of the experience. "When I realized that it was riskier to stay because of the downside, I started on my journey."

The rest of Grove's life was about similar choices, he said.

From the spur-of-the-moment decision to switch from chemistry to engineering to the "impetuous" decision to marry his wife at age 20 to the decision to pursue a more controversial and risky treatment for his cancer, Grove had no regrets.

"Life is full of risks," he explained to the 885 graduating students in the audience. "You have to move on."

"For those of you who made the decision to come to Harvard, to stick it out, to accept a job...you have many more decisions ahead of you," he said.

Grove also made it clear that a students' hunches and logical reasoning skills are both crucial to their success and growth.

"You must use intuition and analysis, not intuition or analysis," said Grove, who also authored Only the Paranoid Survive. "You cannot expect to use both on an equal weight, I don't think there is a right balance or right answer. But when you use them together you achieve the optimal result."