- Isolation from the east coast social hierarchy, rules, and processes and the acceptance of failure allowed Silicon Valley to experiment, fail, and flourish
- It was the wild west with unbridled ambition
- HP men had "an unusual sensitivity to the feelings of others." This is what made all the difference - value pricing, finest management, created the playbook that others ran
- Shockley - able to distill problems without getting confused by extraneous stuff, but was a terrible manager.
- Noyce was the opposite - trusting, respect, decency, equality. Knew he needed to be liked, so he surrounded himself with tough lieutenants
- Valentine organized Fairchild by markets which ripped open the ability to grow and expand for the company - 4 little independent companies inside Fairchild - each had its own sales, product marketing, engineering, and even advertising and legal departments
- Intel - social engineering, paradox, giant research team, perfect triumvirate with Moore, Noyce, Grove
- Shannon had pulled off something remarkable; he had linked the controllable behavior of machines with a system of logic that encompassed all science, perhaps even all human thought. The Age of Computers had begun - and hard on its heels the rise of information theory, the great organizer of the postwar world
- Recessions have proven over and again that they are boon times for entrepreneurs
- IBM Fellowships were used to keep top talent around (IBM's velvet trap)
- Activision - Levy listed the game designers' names on the cartridges, he announced them on television ads. The expected happened: certain top designers actually gained a following, a steady, loyal cadre of fans who could be relied upon to buy each new offering by that "author." What's more, despite their vulnerability to head hunters, these ego-satiated designers remained loyal to Activision
- When business is good, anything goes
- Incredible retelling of Jobs/Woz/Apple
- Jobs' most important contribution to Apple: his dead-eye accuracy at understanding precisely what his generation thought of itself and then playing that tune in perfect pitch
- Reformers and revolutionaries, by eschewing long established and long verified rules of conduct, often slip into behavior far worse than that which they once derided
What I got out of it
- Inspiring, energizing, informative, important. Makes you want to get out and build one of these firms that influences not only its customers, but the way business is done
