Sublime

WHEN I THINK OF the phenomenal growth of the electronics industry over the last fifty years, I realize how fortunate Bill Hewlett and I were to be in on the ground floor. But it reminds me of a story I like to tell on myself. In my sophomore year at Stanford I took a course in American history and had the opportunity to study the westward movement

The open door policy is very important at HP because it characterizes the management style to which we are dedicated. It means managers are available, open, and receptive. Everyone at HP, including the CEO, works in open-plan, doorless offices. This ready availability has its drawbacks in that interruptions are always possible. But at HP we’ve foun

When we think about other technologists selling consumer products, from Henry Ford (a close friend of Edison’s) to Steve Jobs, we see the model that has emerged. The lonely inventor is replaced by the team. The goal is not to make basic scientific discoveries but to apply science to products. The effort was closely related to the market, and the br

The pricing of new products is an important and challenging exercise. Often a product will be introduced to the market at a price too low to make an adequate short-term profit. The thinking is that “we’ll get our costs down and that will enable us to make a good profit”— either next month, next quarter, or next year. But that time seldom, if ever,

Linked with MBWA is another important management practice at Hewlett-Packard, and a basic tenet of the HP Way. It’s called the “open door policy.” Like MBWA, this policy is aimed at building mutual trust and understanding, and creating an environment in which people feel free to express their ideas, opinions, problems, and concerns.

Among Kelly Johnson’s strengths was a sure grasp of what mattered to his people and what didn’t. Most of them were engineers and tinkerers who hated paperwork, which he cut to an absolute minimum.

When we started, we wanted to build a company that we would like to work at and we kept applying that criterion. I remember, when we first hired people in the original days, John and I would take turns hand-delivering a dozen roses to the spouse if it was woman, a bottle of cognac if the spouse was a man, and then champagne to the employee. We did