Comment Articles

HP's garage grail

Tony Westbrook AnchorDesk

Published: 24 Mar 2000 14:23 GMT

The company was (and is) Hewlett-Packard. And I, like all new inductees, was counselled intensively in the 'HP way'. This was a process requiring such commitment and belief, it bordered on a religious training. Indeed this comment piece is probably the first time I have written about HP in any depth since then: as a lapsed believer could I ever be truly objective? But surely this must have worn off by now?

The facts were compelling - as evidenced by how much to I can still remember all this time later. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard joined forces to manufacture an audio oscillator - the HP200A. The revised version of this product found favour when Walt Disney bought it to help make the film Fantasia.

Bill and Dave were Stanford University graduates. Bill and Dave started their working relationship operating out of a Palo Alto Garage (make a note of that, it becomes important later) with $538 capital. In time Bill and Dave created the California-based company that in turn provided the skills and personnel that largely created Silicon Valley, the PC industry and the dot-com revolution that followed it. HP, the company that consistently has ploughed a fixed percentage of turnover into R and D., even in the lean years, to encourage development and product improvement. By all accounts HP deserves a central place in technology history.

With all that history behind me. I was especially interested to see how HP is now choosing to present and re-package itself. We see the new CEO Carly Fiorina standing in front of that very garage espousing HP's place as the original start-up. The home of invention ('Invent' is now the strap-line under the HP logo). The garage is a place that any HP employee will recognise as the high altar of HP values.

But is this a presentation of the truth as already indoctrinated into HP employees? Or is this a cynical attempt to regain the lost glories of a company some would see as having lost their way...