“Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment.”
Andrew S. Grove
Only the Paranoid Survive (Primary source)
Andrew Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive stands as a seminal meditation on corporate survival in an age of relentless technological upheaval. Published in 1996, when the digital revolution was reshaping the very foundations of American economic life, the book distills Grove’s hard-won wisdom into a theory of what he termed “strategic inflection points”—those epochal moments when the fundamental rules governing a business undergo tectonic transformation.
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“If competition is chasing you (and they always are—this is why "only the paranoid survive"), you only get out of the valley of death by outrunning the people who are after you. And you can only outrun them if you commit yourself to a particular direction and go as fast as you can. You could argue that, since they are chasing you, you should give yourself all sorts of alternative directions—in other words, hedge. I say, "No." Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment. Without exquisite focus, the resources and energy of the organization will be spread a mile wide—and they will be an inch deep.”
Andrew S. Grove
“A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary source“Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary source“Here I’d like to introduce the concept of leverage, which is the output generated by a specific type of work activity. An activity with high leverage will generate a high level of output; an activity with low leverage, a low level of output.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary source“Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say yes to one thing you are inevitably saying no to another.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary sourceMore quotes by Andrew S. Grove →
“Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
— William Blake Primary source“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceCommitment Focus Decisions Hedging