By the time ‘management’ figured out that they had been played, the product was a big success. Both Hewlett and Packard used this example to communicate the principle that, “sometimes you have to do what you KNOW is right, even if ‘management’ doesn’t get it – and you won’t get fired for it around here.”

The lesson stuck. Twenty years later when I joined HP, people were still telling this story. This type of principle-centered leadership and support of internal entrepreneurship was the real source of HP’s ability to reinvent itself.

steve

Your insights on HP made me wonder how would you characterize (or rate) HP’s attempts at “re-invention” during the last ten years? Certainly Carly Fiorina’s tenure will be a controversial topic for some time to come, but the cultural angst generated by the loss of thier founders notwithstanding, HP seemed to really reach stall speed around 2000.

It would be nice to hear your thoughts.

KC

But one more question about your “lessons learned”, as the option is not there: what happens when:
i) the founder is still around
ii) you’ve got a business in the middle of a huge transition (think media in present times) and
iii) you’ve also got the “new guys with the fresh vision” on the management team.

Does the ecosystem go “Bang!”?

Steven Blank: Managers need to be more entrepreneurial.

Me: You got to listen to them BOTH.

-Ben

I think it is perfectly healthy and desirable for companies to go out of business. Instead of bemoaning the demise of an old company we should be celebrating new companies that develop new helpful technologies. New companies are a much better laboratory for improving organizational structures, than the romantic cliché of making an elephant dance.

What is a company anyway? You cannot say it is the people (owners, manager or workers). The people components of a company are dynamic, fluid and constantly changing. People are not immortal, why should companies be immortal?

If you drop the sentimentality, a company is a merely a brand-name for a historical context. And brand-names are ultimately are just commodities that can be bought and sold (e.g., RCA, Pontiac, Plymouth, and any number of relocated sports teams).

We always have a perception that corporate giants cannot innovate because of bureaucracy and slow moving speed. But your story has proved that big companies are able to innovate when they have the right corporate culture. Recently, I have read a story about Google that is related to your post too.

Sergey Brin once said, “Instead of having our employees in large buildings, we could have several thousand houses each with a garage – there’s nothing stopping us from doing that.”

With this kind of commitment to innovation, it’s not difficult to image that companies like Google & Apple can achieve sustainable innovation.