Sigh ... If only Mark Hurd remained at the company.
You're serious? Mark Hurd is a bean counter, not a technologist. Meg is not perfect, but she's vastly better than Hurd.
(HP employee)
Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
51–60 of 119 posts
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#52See A Short History of HP:
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#53Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#54I predict we will see more of this. There was a reason for conglomerates in 1960-70s: shortage of capital meant that cross-subsidizing one division by another was the only viable way to finance growth. These days are long over. Nowadays, it makes much more sense to operate unrelated businesses as completely independent companies, with different set of managers and investors.
Not sure. A lot of the success of Samsung in the smartphone market is due to vertical integration. They save around 10-15% of bill-of-materials cost reduction due to this, they sometimes have unique components(like being first with HD-oled display), they have more control over manufacturers(as a condition for using a Qualcomm processor, they wanted the processor to be made at a Samsung fab), They are less exposed to…
Vertical integration makes good sense, but I don't think that's the situation HP is in. This is more of a horizontal split up. It does mean they can apply less collective pressure on component providers, but only to the extent that those business have overlapping needs. So one way to clarify the parent's point is that businesses should split up when they sell to different markets. I think the previous hesitation to take that step was the degree to which HP actually did have some (not hugely convincing) sales synergy between its server and printer businesses.
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#55How is this different to the strategy/plans outlined by HP's previous CEO Leo Apotheker before he got fired abruptly? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Apotheker#Hewlett-Pack...
It's been a while, but I think Apotheker's plan was a two-parter: * to kill off / sell off the consumer division * to just turn HP into an IBM-type enterprise company. The former isn't exactly true in this case; the latter is coming true.
The former is in reality the same. It's just splitting the consumer division off (selling it to current share holders) is much easier than trying to find a buyer for it.
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#56Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#57It really bothers me what has been been done to HP as an engine of innovation and product development. It's extremely similar to what the leadership at IBM has done to that company the last ~15 years. I feel like the destiny for both of these companies is to slowly be split into ever smaller pieces until half of those pieces are eventually acquired by other US or Chinese firms for dirt cheap (and nothing against Chin…
And that's why we must understand that at executive level gender does not matter. What matters is strategy and ability to execute. When HP announced "Meg Whitman" as CEO everyone was so voraciously attacking how HP is is being in bad condition because of male CEOs.
Being male does not matter. Whitman has failed tremendously. Not only HP has laid off thousands of people from US ( some of them I knew personally very well ) and increased offshoring in India and Philippines but also they now seriously lack true culture of invention.
I studied APM at Stanford and HP case study was presented repeatedly as how it went from Inventor's Org. to control structured Org.
I was recruiting at major ( top 20 ) universities and from many places I got feedback that young people deliberately avoid joining HP. Those who have left in HP are in survival mode and always worrying if they are next in round of layoffs.
So when feminists advocates claim that female CEOs are better than male CEO answer is simply NO. At highest level you want someone who can not only steer the ship but take everyone along with you without loosing them.
If I was major investor in HP, first thing I would ask is Whitman be removed from CEO position. Get new energy in. Since cultural changes don't happen overnight implement strategies to go from Operational ( Control ) based Organization to Inventor's Org.
I will certainly not consider next CEO based on gender and would not bring someone in just because she has vagina.
PS - Sorry if this came as too bold but I could not resist myself.
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#58The most amazing thing for me of the piece is the realization that HP still had $110B+ in revenue last year - its a useful reminder to us (put myself squarely in this category) of some of the behemoths in the valley that get short shift at times in the "Silicon Valley" PR ecosystem. There's apparently some interesting research still going in HP labs - one smart friend moved out here to work on Memristors with them (o…
Well, they are the 3rd largest in revenue in the IT / Software services segment after IBM and Fujitsu.
Good point, and how often are the blogs and podcasts overflowing with news about IBM and Fujitsu? I discovered long ago that there is a huge difference between generating news and generating the things companies are created to generate (money, products, services, employment, research, etc.) One consequence of this difference is that our unconscious estimates of the comparative scale of what is going on at various companies is wildly distorted by news coverage.
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which division gets the calculators? I learned about the HP-12C today, which appears to be the TI-83 of finance: "The HP-12C is HP's longest and best-selling product, in continual production since its introduction in 1981" ... "In 2008, HP modified the design so that new production runs contain an ARM processor which runs an emulated version of previous chips." http://www.hp.com/calculators/ http://store.hp.com/webap…
When I left HP around 6 years ago there were maybe 3 HP employees left working on calculators, no joke. They were doing their best to keep the dream alive, but they just didn't have a lot of backing or resources.
They would be mostly managers handling outsourcing contracts...
Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two
#60Reminds me of how during the last bubble, HP spun of its unsexy device and medical equipment making divisions (as Agilent) in order to recast itself to the public markets as a sexy Internet company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agilent_Technologies
> In 1999, product lines not directly connected with computers, storage, and imaging were grouped into a separate company (Agilent), the stock of which was offered to the public in an initial public offering. The Agilent IPO may have been the largest in the history of Silicon Valley at the time.
Since 11/26/99, HPQ is -24% and A is +40% (both pretty lame 14Y returns)
http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&c...