"The HP Phenomenon"

Innovation and Business Transformation

By Charles H. House & Raymond L. Price

Chuck, has done me the great honour to deliver a proprietary and confidential draft of their almost completed book:
"The HP Phenomenon".
The book will be published by the Stanford University Press in spring 2009.

In an obvious concern for discretion, nothing of the contents may be unveiled here. Just consider that this book will be a "Never seen before" about the real HP history. An in-depth analysis of the Hewlett Packard business strategy. From the origin of the company up to now, Charles House and Raymond Price, list and analyse major events which were determining factors in the HP seventy years history.
The HP Phenomenon is not just a two-man writing, the framework of the story reconstruction stands on hundreds of interviews managed by Chuck and Ray during a 5 years period. Most of the major actors of the HP business have contributed to the writing accuracy.

The advantage of this book will be that the authors "lived the experience" and they can tell it from a different perspective than a management or a journalism book. On April this year, waiting for the publication, Chuck openned a Blog (see chapter below) on which he gives a short explanation of the book construction:

"Chuck House and Ray Price are the authors. We were impressed with the relatively unique Hewlett-Packard innovation approach when we teamed in the early 1980’s to write and teach an eighty-hour Project Managers course within HP. Price’s work with Ouchi studying HP culture and practices dovetailed with the perspective that House had just gained while designing and teaching a forty-hour video-based electronics course for GE engineers concerned about mid-career redefinition for a digital world. The two experiences gave each of us an extraordinary view of the diversity and special strengths provided by a radically divisionalized, semi-autonomous organization when it was combined with an expectation of excellence, and a strong encouragement of innovation. Four years of working and traveling together reinforced these views.
More than five hundred employees and others have provided stories, anecdotes, and materials for our consideration. We have gathered far more material than we were able to use; selection has been difficult and often arbitrary. We apologize to all who find that their efforts on our behalf are not adequately reflected herein; many times the mutually re-enforcing aspects of several interviewees were critical for us to be able to include the segment, even as it was impractical to name all who contributed insight to each aspect of the issues. Some perspectives are included from people at other companies, and in places the parallel path of a competitor is traced for a period because of the importance of that segment to HP’s evolution. Inclusions for other companies have been corroborated through Annual Reports and corporate histories."

Chuck and Jennifer House, and Eric Mimoz checking the HP Memory web site statistics

Checking
the HP Memory
Web Site Statistics

Meeting Chuck gave us an opportunity to make a review of the overall project evolution since our Meeting in Palo Alto, last year.

The numerous update applied to the HP Memory web site were listed and commented. A number of further evolutions were planned and discussed.

The web site statistics aroused a particular Chuck's interest. Constant grow of the number of visitors, and of the dataflow of downloaded documents is the best proof of the magnitude of interest developped by our project.