Andy Grove Enters New Post-Intel Role As Activist Capitalist
It's a busy week for Andy Grove, even by his normally hectic standards; this lion in winter still holds sway over a sprawling pride.
While no longer on its board, Mr. Grove remains an informal adviser to Intel, where he was CEO for many years. Tomorrow marks the official publication of a new biography, by Harvard historian Richard S. Tedlow. And tomorrow night, in a speech at Stanford University, he will present his ideas about reforming one corner of health care in the U.S.
His prescription is for medicine to "Shift left." The advice has nothing to do with the traditional political spectrum, though some of Mr. Grove's business chums do think that at 70 years old, he's going liberal on them. Instead, it involves applying lessons from the history of the computer industry that Mr. Grove himself helped write.
He talked about all this last week in the exceedingly modest offices of his family's charitable foundation, located about 15 miles from Intel's headquarters.
His involvement in health care isn't new; Mr. Grove endured a very public bout with prostate cancer 10 years ago. But his current work has little to do with the "Please-I-don't-want-to-die" school of philanthropy, in which gazillionaires fund diseases with which they are afflicted.
Instead, Mr. Grove says he is alarmed by several structural issues involving health care in America, notably, the huge number of uninsured, who are often forced to get primary care in emergency rooms.
To explain "Shift left," Mr. Grove describes the bottom axis of a scale in which products and services grow more full-featured, complicated and expensive as you move to the right. To "Shift left" on this scale is to, in effect, "Keep it simple, stupid."
Specifically, Mr. Grove is a big fan of low-cost, walk-in clinics, the sort beginning to appear in stores like Wal-Mart. He says they provide basic medical care for the uninsured, and also take some strain off of America's overloaded emergency rooms. But one thing missing from this emerging clinic infrastructure is a good system of medical record-keeping.
Mr. Grove, naturally, thinks technology can help. But rather than designing an elaborate and technically sophisticated medical-database system, something practically every tech company is now trying to do, Mr. Grove suggests the exact opposite. Shift left; keep the record of a patient's visit in, for example, a generic but Web-accessible word-processing file.
Just like the early personal computer, it will be far from ideal, but it will be a start, and it can get better over time. The alternative, he says, is to wait endlessly for a perfect technology.
Students of business history will recognize the idea of a plain-vanilla medical record as an example of a "disruptive technology," which is initially opposed by powerful incumbents with a vested economic interest in shifting ever-rightward. So which powerful incumbents might oppose him now?
"Intel, for one," Mr. Grove shoots back.
His old company, he explains, has become fully invested in backing complicated, expensive systems for medical records. In fact, Mr. Grove says with a sigh, he has trouble getting former colleagues to buy into his ideas on health care.
Mr. Grove is involved in a political effort, too; it may indeed be his first fit of social activism. With venture capitalist John Doerr, he is helping fund FirstFreedomFirst.org, which is trying to collect a million signatures to support the First Amendment's separation of church and state.
Some of the concerns of First Freedom First are, at least by the standards of Silicon Valley, safe ones, notably support for stem-cell research. Others are a little edgier, like the teaching of creationism and restrictions on reproductive health.
This is where it gets personal. Mr. Grove has a mild form of Parkinson's, and his right hand often shakes as he talks. (He got nearly speechless with rage when describing the recent attacks on his friend and fellow Parkinson's sufferer, Michael J. Fox.)
Mr. Grove has never been associated with the pro-Democratic wing of Silicon Valley, and he denies he is joining it now. His politics, he says, are those of a "rational capitalist." They are also, he says, those of the eternally grateful immigrant.
Mr. Grove arrived in America from Hungary after the 1956 uprising, and he says he is greatly saddened by what the health-care crisis and the divisive use of religion are doing to the American middle class, which for him is the essence of the country he loves.
The ex-CEO won't talk about current goings on at Intel. He does, though, talk about its past -- and wistfully. He helped make Intel one of the world's greatest brands; for most men, that would be the prelude to a retirement full of self-satisfaction.
Instead, there is much regret that Andy Grove's Intel wasn't able to use its brand name for even one other great thing besides microprocessors. Mr. Grove wishes there were now, say, a line of Intel consumer electronics as famous as Intel Pentiums.
He speaks admiringly of the ability of Steve Jobs to expand from computers into music players. He doesn't walk around with an iPod himself, but he sure knows a great business story when he hears it.
英特尔前CEO的新角色
尽管繁忙的日程对安迪?格罗夫(Andy Grove)来说已经是家常便饭，但这仍是异常忙碌的一周，卸下重任的他仍有很多事情要做。
格罗夫在英特尔(Intel)担任了多年的首席执行长，尽管如今已不在董事会任职，他仍是英特尔的非正式顾问。2006年11月2日是哈佛大学历史学家理查德?泰德罗(Richard S. Tedlow)为格罗夫撰写的传记出版的日子。当天晚上，格罗夫还要在斯坦福大学发表演讲，针对美国医疗福利制度的一个方面提出自己的改革设想。
他开出的良方是让医疗福利政策更为“左倾”。所谓“左倾”和传统的政治派别并无关联，尽管格罗夫的一些商业伙伴认为，古稀之年的格罗夫的确有些左派作风了。其实，这包括将计算机行业的历史经验教训运用其中，而格罗夫在计算机的发展历史上也书写了浓重的一笔。
前些日子，在距英特尔总部约15英里的格罗夫慈善基金会异常朴素的办公室里，格罗夫阐述了自己的观点。
格罗夫很早就与医疗福利制度结缘了。他在10年前罹患前列腺癌的事广为人知；不过，他现在的工作和“求求你，我不想死”类的慈善事业毫无关系，这类慈善指的是亿万富翁为治愈自己所患的疾病而为攻克该种疾病提供资金支持。
格罗夫说，美国医疗福利制度中几个结构性问题引起了他的关注，最突出的问题就是美国仍有很多人没有医疗保险，他们常常只能在急诊室接受最基本的治疗。
格罗夫解释了“左倾”的含义：他说在坐标轴上，坐标点越是向右，产品和服务就会发展得更全面、更复杂、也更昂贵；而“左倾”的意思就是“保持简单”。
具体而言，格罗夫特别提倡那种费用低廉、无需预约的简易诊所，这种诊所已经在沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)等商场开始出现。格罗夫说，这些诊所不仅可以为不能享受医疗保险的人提供基本的医疗服务，还有助于缓解美国急诊室的压力。不过，这类诊所缺乏的是较为系统的病历登记制度。
格罗夫很自然地想到用科技解决这一问题，但他的想法和目前几乎每家软件公司正在尝试的做法不同。他并不想去开发一个精细复杂的医疗数据库系统，而是提出相反的设想，即“向左倾斜”：让门诊病人的病历存档工作变得简便快捷，比如说，建立一个标准化、可通过互联网编辑的病历文档。
和早期的个人电脑一样，这种设想还很不完善，但它却是个不错的开头，而且今后能不断得以改进。与此相对的另一个选择，格罗夫说，就是遥遥无期地等待完美科技的出现。
研究商业发展史的学生们应该能注意到，这种简便的病历解决方案属于“破坏性科技”的一个典型例子，也就是说，初期它将受到那些希望医疗产品及服务“向右倾斜”的既得利益集团的强力阻挠。那么，现在哪些强大的既得利益者会反对格罗夫的建议呢？
“英特尔公司就是其中之一。”格罗夫不假思索地说。
他解释说，他的老东家英特尔公司已在全力投资支持一个复杂昂贵的病历软件系统。事实上，格罗夫叹了口气说，他很难说服以往的那些同事同意他提出的病历解决方案。
此外，格罗夫还在参与一项政治运动，这也许是他参与的第一个社会激进主义运动。和风险投资家约翰?德尔(John Doerr)一起，格罗夫正在为FirstFreedomFirst.org募集资金，该组织在试着收集一百万个签名，声援美国宪法第一修正案(First Amendment)所确立的“政教分离”的做法。
至少以硅谷的标准来看，FirstFreedomFirst的部分政见是合理的，特别是对干细胞研究的支持等；其它一些政治观点则有些过激，如提倡宇宙创造说、控制克隆医疗技术等。
后者与格罗夫息息相关。格罗夫有轻微的帕金森综合症(Parkinson's)，说话时右手经常颤抖。（当他谈及同为帕金森患者的好友迈克尔?福克斯(Michael J. Fox)最近中风的事情时，几乎难过得说不出话来。）
格罗夫从未和硅谷的亲民主政团有过联系，现在也否认自己将会加入。格罗夫说，他在政治上站在“理性资本家”的阵营一方，同时也属于对美国心存感激的移民的政治立场。
1956年匈牙利政治格局发生变化后，格罗夫来到美国。他说，医疗制度危机和宗教分化倾向对美国中产阶级造成的负面影响令他深感悲哀，因为中产阶级是他所热爱的美国的精髓所在。
这位英特尔前CEO不愿谈论英特尔公司的现状，不过倒是很热情地谈起它的过去。在任期间，格罗夫帮助英特尔发展成为全球最着名的品牌之一；对大多数人来说，这种成就足以成为心安理得、光荣退休的资本。
不过，安迪-格罗夫感到遗憾的是，当时他掌控下的英特尔公司没能利用品牌优势推出除微处理器外的其它热销产品；他很希望现在市面上除了英特尔奔腾芯片(Intel Pentiums)外，还能有一系列英特尔的消费电子产品。
他很欣赏苹果电脑公司CEO史蒂夫?乔伯斯(Steve Jobs)的能力，乔伯斯成功领导公司从电脑制造行业扩展进入音乐播放器领域。虽然格罗夫自己没有随身携带iPod，但他对这个成功的商业案例赞赏不已。
Lee Gomes
