The Flight of a Wild Duck: An Improbable Journey Through Life and Technology

Product Description

In The Flight of a Wild Duck, Avram Miller describes how luck, intuition, imagination, humor, and risk-taking enabled him to become one of Silicon Valley’s visionaries and leading venture capitalists. He recalls his journey of overcoming childhood illness, a troubled family, and an inability to function in the education system to eventually become a senior executive at one of the world’s leading technology companies.

Never one to follow a conventional path, Miller broke away from a difficult childhood, leaving home to become a merchant seaman and later a hippie and activist in 1960s San Francisco. Though he had no formal education, his childhood interest in electronics provided him with a foundation in technology, and he ended up working in medical research. He was appointed as an associate professor at twenty-nine. He later transitioned from a successful medical science career to the computer industry, landing at Intel, where he cofounded Intel Capital, one of the top venture capital organizations in the world.

The Flight of a Wild Duck is rich with personal stories, told with humor and honesty, interwoven with the history of the computer industry. Throughout, Miller provides insights into the legendary industry pioneers with whom he worked, including Andy Grove, Bill Gates, and Ken Olsen. The book documents several critical events that gave rise to the personal computer, the internet, and the creation of broadband communication, in which Miller played a leading role.

Review

“The Flight of a Wild Duck does a wonderful job describing the journey of a young person growing up in the counter culture and political turmoil of the ’60s to become one of the major influencers in Silicon Valley…As someone that has known Avram for over forty years, I found the book honest and engaging. This book will introduce you to a truly fascinating, multifaceted individual worth knowing.” –Steven Mayer, cofounder of Atari
“Avram Miller’s book reveals his uncanny ability to predict future technologies and, significantly, to realize their potential impact on society. It was amazing to witness how Avram could make the most talented people in communication, media, and finance become comfortable with technology. The results changed all of our lives.” –Lakshmi Pratury, founder and CEO, INK
“If you want to know how Avram Miller become one of Silicon Valley’s most out-of-the-box thinkers at the dawn of the PC Age, read his wonderful new memoir. Unlike the current internet barons, he lived a whole life before he touched a computer.” –Jonathan Taplin, author of Move Fast and Break Things and The Magic Years
“Much is written about and attributed to Gates, Jobs, Grove, and a handful of others. But these entrepreneurs and visionaries would never have made it to the world stage without dozens of smart, driven, creative colleagues who made personal computing, ubiquitous broadband, and the Internet a reality. These people lived predominantly in the future–inventing the future–creating products and an industry that forever changed the world. Avram Miller was one of these.” –Bob Stearns, former SVP, chief technology and strategy officer, Compaq Computer
“Avram Miller has been present at the creation of several seminal events in the computer and communications industries. This wonderful memoir brings his significant contributions to life, with the basic concepts, the underlying trends, the many personalities (Jobs, Gates, Grove, Olson, Vadàsz, Milken, just to name a few), and the benefits and frustrations of life inside major technological corporations. Find a comfortable chair, grab a glass of something refreshing, and prepare to experience a series of adventures with a wild, and highly entertaining, duck.” –Henry Chesbrough, faculty director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley and Maire Tecnimont Professor of Open Innovation, Luiss University in Rome, Italy
“The vectors that his book spins–from his fo