Her main innovation was to reduce the expense of innovation and just 
put out the same stuff that 500 other companies are doing, but to 
load it up with adware.

At 08:07 AM 10/10/2006, John Lee wrote:
>Boy is she delirious with visions of grandeur.  Where is the 
>innovation she's referring to?  What has HP done in the past 5 years 
>that has been new or different?  Am I blind to it?  They make money 
>from toner sales.  Their Non-Stop servers seem like good product, 
>out on the leading edge for uptime, but probably a very small 
>installed base.  Compaq brings some good storage products, but 
>nothing revolutionary.  Their Unix line is good, but pretty 
>generic.  PCs are PCs.  Agilent's not part of HP.  What am I missing?
>
>John Lee
>
>
>At 12:32 PM 10/10/06 +0000, J Dolliver wrote:
>>Carly Fiorina speak out.....
>>
>>Exerpts from her interview and book. I am sure it will be on my 
>>book list "NOT".
>>
>>A lasting legacy
>>What do you think are the best and the worst things that you did at HP?
>>I think the best things I did for HP have to do with the 
>>fundamentals of its transformation. I would say there were four 
>>things. First, we made the decision that HP was going to lead 
>>again. And that meant we had to undertake the merger with Compaq. 
>>That merger, undertaken in extraordinarily difficult times, 
>>provided the foundation for leadership. And by the time I left, we 
>>were already number one or number two of every business in which we 
>>competed. It is a foundation upon which others have now built, to 
>>their credit. Fundamental. It established the trajectory of 
>>performance and leadership for the business.
>>Second thing: We returned HP to its roots of innovation. When the 
>>technology company called Hewlett-Packard doesn't even show up in 
>>the top 25 innovators in the world, which was the case when I 
>>arrived, it's not innovating anymore. By the time I left, it was 11 
>>patents a day. It was number three in the world. That's a big deal.
>>Did the genetic material brought into the company with Compaq 
>>accelerate that?
>>Well, I think it accelerated it, but I don't want to say that the 
>>merger alone was the cause of that.
>>No, HP was a great institution...
>>
>>Yeah, but it was atrophying. It was neglected.
>>Everybody at HP focused on incrementalism. And if you're only 
>>focused on incrementalism, you cannot innovate. So it took a 
>>fundamental reorientation of people's mindsets as well as peoples' 
>>metrics to reinvigorate our innovative capacity, which is 
>>fundamental to a technology company.
>>Third: HP had become a bureaucracy. It needed to be a meritocracy. 
>>And that too takes really hard work over an extended period of 
>>time. What does a bureaucracy do? It becomes slow-moving, insular, 
>>internally focused. What's a meritocracy about? It's focused on 
>>performance competitively measured - huge, hugely important.
>>And I think the final thing - and these aren't in any particular 
>>order - we became a customer-focused business again. When I arrived 
>>at HP, we couldn't measure customer sat. Customers would say to me, 
>>"I don't know who to call; they never call me." We had 150 brands. 
>>We had 87 different product lines that never talked to each other.
>>This was not a customer-focused business. And in my tenure, it 
>>became a customer-focused business. Not only did it become a 
>>customer-focused business, but the way the company thinks about 
>>customers, total customer experience, is still deeply embedded in 
>>the fabric of the business.
>>Those are big things. Now I could go on and on about, you know, in 
>>the PC business we made hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of 
>>investments over three years to build a direct distribution engine 
>>that ultimately, clearly competes with Dell (Charts), despite great 
>>skepticism that we could do it. I mean, I could go on into 
>>specifics, if you like, in every single product line. But the big 
>>picture is the strategy to lead and the merger with Compaq; 
>>innovation, customer focus and a performance-based, customer-based culture.
>>So now to the worst things. I think my mistakes - and I made them - 
>>were several. First, I made mistakes about people. And sometimes 
>>when I say that, people think, oh, well that's not a big deal. 
>>That's a big deal. A leader's most important set of choices are 
>>about people. And I made some mistakes in judgment about people.
>>In some cases, I'm very candid in the book. I put the wrong people 
>>in certain jobs and left them there too long. I underestimated 
>>certain people. I overestimated other people. I didn't get all my 
>>people choices wrong, but I got some wrong.
>>The second thing I would say is clearly I should have been more 
>>focused and more effective at upgrading the capability in the 
>>boardroom, and I didn't get it done. And by the time I was firmly 
>>focused on getting it done, they got me done.
>>
>>You make it clear that from the day you started meeting with the 
>>board, you realized this was a weird, fairly dysfunctional board.
>>
>>Initially I couldn't do it because they had given me my mandate. 
>>Then we went through the whole merger, and board members are a 
>>political negotiation, who gets to sit where. And by the time we 
>>were in a position to deal with it, I didn't deal with it 
>>aggressively enough, and then it got away from me.
>>And I think the third thing I would say is, I would do it all 
>>again, but I underestimated how incredibly difficult change would 
>>be at Hewlett-Packard. It was extraordinarily difficult and painful 
>>for everyone, including me. I didn't appreciate the depth of 
>>emotion around the first layoff. I mean, I knew there would be 
>>emotion around it, but I really thought that given the downturn 
>>that we were in, people would see it fundamentally as necessary. So 
>>that emotion makes a big difference in a company.
>>By the way, when I say I would do it again, I am absolutely 
>>convinced, despite the fact that those changes were extraordinary, 
>>tough and painful, they had to be done, and the company is stronger 
>>and better for it. And I think employees at Hewlett-Packard now 
>>enjoy being part of the leading technology company in the world.
>>
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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276

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