IP: HP Way, a victim of its times

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Title: approve:ggmu  HP Way, a victim of its times

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2779423.htm 

Maybe Hewlett-Packard will succeed in buying Compaq, maybe not. However the vote goes, the HP Way has withered.

But it's not entirely fair to solely blame HP's current management. The HP Way was fading before Carly Fiorina arrived on the scene. It was a victim of its times.

Silicon Valley grew up on the example of William Hewlett and David Packard. Theirs was an era when actual innovation, honest hard work and concern beyond one's own immediate sphere were core to the corporate mission. Profits mattered, of course, because a business couldn't exist without them. Under the HP Way, though, profits and humane values fueled each other.

The icy equations of today's shareholding and wealth-building don't account for humanity, sorry to say. They calculate financial value only.

snip