Inside Intel

Even the gentle clinking of silverware stopped dead. Andrew S. Grove, the revered former Intel Corp. (INTC ) chief executive and now a senior adviser, had stepped up to the microphone in a hotel ballroom down the street from Intel's Santa Clara (Calif.) headquarters, preparing to respond to a startling presentation by new Chief Marketing Officer Eric B. Kim. All too familiar with Grove's legendary wrath, many of the 300 top managers at the Oct. 20 gathering tensed in their seats as they waited for a tongue-lashing of epic proportions. "No one knew what to think," recalls one attendee.

The reason? Kim's plan, cooked up with new CEO Paul S. Otellini, was a sharp departure from the company Grove had built. Essentially, they were proposing to blow up Intel's brand, the fifth-best-known in the world. As Otellini looked on from a front table, Kim declared that Intel must "clear out the cobwebs" and kill off many Grove-era creations. Intel Inside? Dump it, he said. The Pentium brand? Stale. The widely recognized dropped "e" in Intel's corporate logo? A relic.