Friday, March 12, 2010
the University of Illinois talk with Ray
For any who might be interested, the full 75 minute presentation at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, described earlier in February, is now available for viewing at http://engineering.illinois.edu/videos/ray-price-and-charles-house-discuss-hp-phenomenon
and what about HP alumni
I had lunch with Ken Tingley yesterday, a person not mentioned in the book. He said we met in Colorado Springs once, forty-four years ago when he was part of a Palo Alto review group and I was a presenter of some of the new displays. I didn't recall, but I had heard his name a number of times during interviews that we conducted for the book -- we just never followed up. He had been involved in HP from about 1958 through 1970 -- heydays, going from $30 million to $350M -- and he had managed International Sales as the international divisions were started, etc. He had some nice background stories, and some wonderful insights since he worked closely with Noel Eldred and the Executive team of the era.
But his chief question, at the end of an informative and pleasant luncheon, was "have you considered a book about the HP alumni?" The question he posed was a great one -- okay, this company had its great HP Way, and that turns out to have fueled the world's most consistent performing company in terms of revenue growth and consistent profitability -- how exportable was that ethos? The glib answer might say that those who left "didn't fit in" or didn't understand the HP Way, but that'd be a total cop-out. When you consider the top level management talent that was grown and nurtured at HP, and then left at the peak of their leadership days -- and we enumerated a number of them in the book -- how successfully did they take this semi-mystical methodology and culture into their next environment? If not, why not?
He named Eric Schmidt at Google, John Chambers at Cisco, Justin Rattner at Intel, Steve Wozniak at Apple, as a few who 'learned their views' at HP. I demurred, saying that each of these (and I'm not sure that they all WERE at HP to start) were only briefly at HP, and that'd be a hard thesis to defend. But certainly Rick Belluzzo, Doug Chance, Dick Hackborn's time at Microsoft, Tony Perez, and many others DID grow up in the HP milieu and did go on to lead other large companies -- how'd they do? And a number of others did startups, or near startups, such as Charlie Trimble, Bill Krause, Fred Gibbons, Ed McCracken. Tingley left HP to become CEO of Northern Tel, for example. And then a full career as a high-tech executive. How'd he feel about it? Like, this ethos was REALLY hard to transplant... and WHY could fill a volume.
It'd be a great question to examine -- another one of those Monograph opportunities!
But his chief question, at the end of an informative and pleasant luncheon, was "have you considered a book about the HP alumni?" The question he posed was a great one -- okay, this company had its great HP Way, and that turns out to have fueled the world's most consistent performing company in terms of revenue growth and consistent profitability -- how exportable was that ethos? The glib answer might say that those who left "didn't fit in" or didn't understand the HP Way, but that'd be a total cop-out. When you consider the top level management talent that was grown and nurtured at HP, and then left at the peak of their leadership days -- and we enumerated a number of them in the book -- how successfully did they take this semi-mystical methodology and culture into their next environment? If not, why not?
He named Eric Schmidt at Google, John Chambers at Cisco, Justin Rattner at Intel, Steve Wozniak at Apple, as a few who 'learned their views' at HP. I demurred, saying that each of these (and I'm not sure that they all WERE at HP to start) were only briefly at HP, and that'd be a hard thesis to defend. But certainly Rick Belluzzo, Doug Chance, Dick Hackborn's time at Microsoft, Tony Perez, and many others DID grow up in the HP milieu and did go on to lead other large companies -- how'd they do? And a number of others did startups, or near startups, such as Charlie Trimble, Bill Krause, Fred Gibbons, Ed McCracken. Tingley left HP to become CEO of Northern Tel, for example. And then a full career as a high-tech executive. How'd he feel about it? Like, this ethos was REALLY hard to transplant... and WHY could fill a volume.
It'd be a great question to examine -- another one of those Monograph opportunities!
surprises from readers
As I have mentioned before, many who first see the book say "wow, BIG, looks like War and Peace", but within fifteen minutes, say something like "but MY stuff isn't in here".... It is more interesting sometimes when "my stuff IS in here, but you got it wrong". Fortunately, we haven't had too many of the latter kinds of responses, although to be sure, I always felt when journalists covered an event for which I was a participant, that I wished I'd been at the same event they describe.
But of late, three "communities" have apparently 'ramped up' purchases, and hence readership. One is the Colorado Springs contingent, where I spent about sixty percent of my HP time; another is Boise, Idaho, the home of Dick Hackborn for the past thirty-four years (and hence the 'capital' of HP Peripherals); and a third is the CAE groups (IC Test, Board Test, PC Test, SESD, CAD tools for ME, etc.) where I spent nearly a decade.
Colorado Springs folk -- such as John Riggen, Hal Edmondson, Gene Warrington, John Strathman, Dave Dayton and many others -- have been surprised by how little of the 'Springs history (their history really) was described. My 'defense' has been of two forms -- first, I wanted to be careful that this book was not an autobiographical account, and a lot of my own career was intertwined with events there, so it would be hard not to mix it up pretty good; second, the Springs mostly was organized for a long time around oscilloscopes, not exactly HP's most shining star. To emphasize a relatively negative chapter of HP when so much was positive, especially a chapter that is a footnote to the "main story" seemed somehow inappropriate. My assessment currently is that a wonderful monograph awaits, that would capture a blended history of these tools that really ushered in the digital age, along with the historical figures who led for so long.
The Boise folk, a proud and extremely successful group on balance over many years, give perspective something like "DMD (Disc Memory Division) was once both the fastest growing and the largest single division of HP; it got extremely short shrift in the book". Or "Boise Printer Division was mostly Big Printers, and you mostly tell the story of Small Printers -- and Enterprise Printing was and is strategically valuable for HP". Or, you tell the stories of each with just a few personalities, not really the key people (or at least ALL the key people). Other views include the notion that the Peripherals Group was under-described, not just Boise, for its many contributions and magnitude in HP history from a revenue, profit, and growth momentum standpoint. A fair assessment. Again, my feeling is that this could be a powerful monograph -- HP often dominated markets (e.g. Digital Voltmeters, Spectrum Analyzers, even Logic Analzyers), but there is something awesome about a company that goes up against the world's largest most successful companies (IBM, Xerox, Canon, Konica) and takes a 50% share or more for two decades. HOW in gawd's name could this be possible? Doesn't happen in cars, planes, or candy bars, and didn't last much longer in CPUs.
The CAE groups look in vain for much description of their long sojourns, again feeling that they pioneered many incredibly valuable contributions for the discipline as well as HP. True enough, but again, this never became the field for which HP was noted, all due respects. And again, my story is intertwined, so to some degree we felt as authors that this was too loaded with our own bias to tell with much depth. Here too, a monograph awaits, but it might better prove to be the story of the field and its impact on designs everywhere rather than an HP story (personal view).
These have been interesting critiques, extremely valid perspectives, and things that were "on our mind" but for various reasons, the choices we made were not as fulfilling for folk in these areas. Our apologies -- but as Joan Didion told us, "let them write their own book"...
But of late, three "communities" have apparently 'ramped up' purchases, and hence readership. One is the Colorado Springs contingent, where I spent about sixty percent of my HP time; another is Boise, Idaho, the home of Dick Hackborn for the past thirty-four years (and hence the 'capital' of HP Peripherals); and a third is the CAE groups (IC Test, Board Test, PC Test, SESD, CAD tools for ME, etc.) where I spent nearly a decade.
Colorado Springs folk -- such as John Riggen, Hal Edmondson, Gene Warrington, John Strathman, Dave Dayton and many others -- have been surprised by how little of the 'Springs history (their history really) was described. My 'defense' has been of two forms -- first, I wanted to be careful that this book was not an autobiographical account, and a lot of my own career was intertwined with events there, so it would be hard not to mix it up pretty good; second, the Springs mostly was organized for a long time around oscilloscopes, not exactly HP's most shining star. To emphasize a relatively negative chapter of HP when so much was positive, especially a chapter that is a footnote to the "main story" seemed somehow inappropriate. My assessment currently is that a wonderful monograph awaits, that would capture a blended history of these tools that really ushered in the digital age, along with the historical figures who led for so long.
The Boise folk, a proud and extremely successful group on balance over many years, give perspective something like "DMD (Disc Memory Division) was once both the fastest growing and the largest single division of HP; it got extremely short shrift in the book". Or "Boise Printer Division was mostly Big Printers, and you mostly tell the story of Small Printers -- and Enterprise Printing was and is strategically valuable for HP". Or, you tell the stories of each with just a few personalities, not really the key people (or at least ALL the key people). Other views include the notion that the Peripherals Group was under-described, not just Boise, for its many contributions and magnitude in HP history from a revenue, profit, and growth momentum standpoint. A fair assessment. Again, my feeling is that this could be a powerful monograph -- HP often dominated markets (e.g. Digital Voltmeters, Spectrum Analyzers, even Logic Analzyers), but there is something awesome about a company that goes up against the world's largest most successful companies (IBM, Xerox, Canon, Konica) and takes a 50% share or more for two decades. HOW in gawd's name could this be possible? Doesn't happen in cars, planes, or candy bars, and didn't last much longer in CPUs.
The CAE groups look in vain for much description of their long sojourns, again feeling that they pioneered many incredibly valuable contributions for the discipline as well as HP. True enough, but again, this never became the field for which HP was noted, all due respects. And again, my story is intertwined, so to some degree we felt as authors that this was too loaded with our own bias to tell with much depth. Here too, a monograph awaits, but it might better prove to be the story of the field and its impact on designs everywhere rather than an HP story (personal view).
These have been interesting critiques, extremely valid perspectives, and things that were "on our mind" but for various reasons, the choices we made were not as fulfilling for folk in these areas. Our apologies -- but as Joan Didion told us, "let them write their own book"...
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Washington D C feedback
Artie Bienenstock (Stanford's Emeritus Dean of Research) came back from DC this week with the story that several told him "that HP book is terrific"... nice to hear it's getting some 'press'
I spent two days at the NSF-sponsored CyberEducation symposium Friday and Saturday. One of the key topics is educators (esp. the pedagogically pure) need "proof" that these Cyber tech ways of educating are effective. The HP book documents (mostly in Stanford Eng'g Dean Jim Gibbons' words) how well the Honors Co-op program worked -- see pp. 236-241). John Seely Brown also described this more briefly in "A Social Use of Information" a few years ago.
What the book did not describe was how and why the experiment ended, after thirty years of relatively significant success. And the ending is disturbing, to me at least. The official answer is that Stanford administrators got greedy (they use a less pejorative word) and tried to substitute faculty time via email for the on-site tutors -- the faculty, not paid extra for the extra work, said "the hell with you" and voted to end the program, and move their work to the extra-curricular extension program for which they did get extra pay. The unreported and under-researched answer is more compelling -- WHY didn't the beneficiary companies and their off-campus students rebel, go to the Stanford admin, and say, "YOU CANNOT ABANDON THIS!"
I think the answer is that the Valley changed, even more than HP changed. From a mindset that engineers are truly important, and long-term employment is a tremendous goal, the Valley has shifted dramatically to a 'hire-and-fire' mood, where outsourced R&D (yes, Virginia, Santa Claus forgot to show up for this one) and high rotation between companies is accepted if not fully encouraged. HP for four decades had less than 2% annual attrition of professional folk; the Valley average today is reputedly twenty times higher than that. In such a world, the onus is on the student, not the company, to take advantage of further education. And benefits like those that HP derived -- a common skillset and vocabulary across multiple countries that linked their labs -- seem archaic at best, and immaterial to be sure.
As for "proof" for educators today, Gibbons himself said that they never reported the results -- if the results were cited today, they'd be dismissed for their irrelevance (anything happening forty years ago cannot be of value today, right?) if not the fact that it is a "failed experiment". On the other hand, engineering is a relatively 'factual' pursuit in coursework, and some 15,000 students over thirty years outperformed (by a full third of a grade point) an equal-sized extremely selective graduate engineering pool. Wags at our meeting said "well, they were focused and motivated since they were more mature" but that ignores the fact that for the first decade, the same "motivated, focused, mature" individuals did worse by a full third of a grade point until the right technology and tutor focus was put in place.
We could in fact learn from history, if we wanted to. But NIH (not invented here) runs deep...
I spent two days at the NSF-sponsored CyberEducation symposium Friday and Saturday. One of the key topics is educators (esp. the pedagogically pure) need "proof" that these Cyber tech ways of educating are effective. The HP book documents (mostly in Stanford Eng'g Dean Jim Gibbons' words) how well the Honors Co-op program worked -- see pp. 236-241). John Seely Brown also described this more briefly in "A Social Use of Information" a few years ago.
What the book did not describe was how and why the experiment ended, after thirty years of relatively significant success. And the ending is disturbing, to me at least. The official answer is that Stanford administrators got greedy (they use a less pejorative word) and tried to substitute faculty time via email for the on-site tutors -- the faculty, not paid extra for the extra work, said "the hell with you" and voted to end the program, and move their work to the extra-curricular extension program for which they did get extra pay. The unreported and under-researched answer is more compelling -- WHY didn't the beneficiary companies and their off-campus students rebel, go to the Stanford admin, and say, "YOU CANNOT ABANDON THIS!"
I think the answer is that the Valley changed, even more than HP changed. From a mindset that engineers are truly important, and long-term employment is a tremendous goal, the Valley has shifted dramatically to a 'hire-and-fire' mood, where outsourced R&D (yes, Virginia, Santa Claus forgot to show up for this one) and high rotation between companies is accepted if not fully encouraged. HP for four decades had less than 2% annual attrition of professional folk; the Valley average today is reputedly twenty times higher than that. In such a world, the onus is on the student, not the company, to take advantage of further education. And benefits like those that HP derived -- a common skillset and vocabulary across multiple countries that linked their labs -- seem archaic at best, and immaterial to be sure.
As for "proof" for educators today, Gibbons himself said that they never reported the results -- if the results were cited today, they'd be dismissed for their irrelevance (anything happening forty years ago cannot be of value today, right?) if not the fact that it is a "failed experiment". On the other hand, engineering is a relatively 'factual' pursuit in coursework, and some 15,000 students over thirty years outperformed (by a full third of a grade point) an equal-sized extremely selective graduate engineering pool. Wags at our meeting said "well, they were focused and motivated since they were more mature" but that ignores the fact that for the first decade, the same "motivated, focused, mature" individuals did worse by a full third of a grade point until the right technology and tutor focus was put in place.
We could in fact learn from history, if we wanted to. But NIH (not invented here) runs deep...
Sunday, February 21, 2010
HP Way interviews for CHM
For an alcove of the Computer History Museum Timeline project, due to debut at the end of 2010 or so, there is intention to have an "HP WAY" video clip since HP helped pioneer the spirit of Silicon Valley. I interviewed four 'oldtimers' this week -- Al Bagley, Carl Cottrell, Bob Grimm, and Art Fong. Each interview was approx 2 hours, and we covered a lot of ground.
The most interesting fact for me was the easy description each of the four had for how they decided things -- Dave and Bill were coaches, not deciders or directors. Amazing to listen to each man describe significant events -- product strategy, marketing strategy, feature decisions, business approaches -- for which they felt responsible, and for which they made the decisions.
The range of responsibility and the level of trust that was exhibited is almost awe-inspiring. Hard to imagine most CEOs today allowing such antics.
errata #2
Last errata was listed Nov 4, 2009. Some additional errata below:
NAMES:
p. 129, 564 Emery Rogers, not Emory. Spelled correctly on p. 544
p. 180 Bill Waters was the SRI marketing person who conducted the focus groups, and concluded that the HP 35 would not sell, due to a very high price and low demand
p, 389 Hennessy, not Hennessey. Correct on pp. 263-64, 417, 629
p. 577 Mark Weiser, also a key XeroxPARC researcher, died prematurely, in 1999. Mark Stefik, still at XeroxPARC, is very much alive -- our apologies
p. 629 Add Fred Gibbons to the index, for citations on pp. 321-22. Remove those pp. from Jim Gibbons' index
FACTS:
p. 51 adopting Fourier analysis "and Laplace transform" mathematics...
pp. 60-61 there were in fact TWO Sonoma meetings -- the Executive Committee and a few others in January, and a General Manager's meeting in June. Bud Eldon supplied data re each
p. 65 Re "Management by Wandering Around" this long-standing practice was named by John Doyle in a speech to the GM meeting in January 1976
p. 70 Doyle also spoke German at the time, but that fact was apparently not known to Hewlett
p. 142 IBM 1401 average rental was $6,500 per month; $2,500 was the cheapest available. See Philip E. Ross, "Rebuilding the 1401", IEEE Spectrum, November 2009
p. 157 Jerry Carlson managed PAD (Palo Alto Div), not AMD (Automated Meas Div, which came later)
pp. 166, 170. 211 "network database", not a 'relational' database
p. 178 BPC stood for Binary Process Controller
p. 197 and p. 341 "Personnel", not 'Human Resources'
p. 309 the crucial product... was the HP 7470A
p. 321 the HP 85 debuted in 1980, not 1981 c.f. p. 309
p. 329 Doyle managed both the Automated Test Division and the Automated Measurements Division for two years
p. 438 "the whole company" is obviously an exaggeration. It is true though that many on the Executive and Management team resisted.
p. 506 the $3.06 million tax break for Ellison was a one-time rebate for the previous three years of taxes paid
p. 572 Footnote 32 -- Doyle gives Hewlett credit for instigating the Corp Training Prgm for high-level execs, not Packard
TYPO's:
p. 259 'very' --> "every"
p. 630 IBM 1401, p. 142
Friday, February 19, 2010
Cisco day
Holy smokes! At noon on Wednesday Feb 17 in the Building 3 auditorium at Cisco, some 400+ attendees, 80% by remote technology, 15+ questions at the end, about evenly split between on-site attendees and those on Webex or in video conference rooms. My gracious hostess was Filomena Pereira, who had advertised the talk widely and given me great advice ahead of time.
Joel Bion, Cisco's SVP for R&D, gave me a tremendous introduction, noting that I'd been a key figure in cementing Cisco's first industrial order back in the early days (1986/7), and it accounted for two things -- in 1989 when he joined, it was about 25% of Cisco's annual revenue, and more importantly, HP provided the reference site of value for their sales efforts with other corporations. He provided this without my telling him the story -- amazing to me, but then, he's been there since the early days.... I linked it to the Medal of Defiance in terms of some of the HP exec's enthusiasm for inking this deal -- in truth, the system we built is why the Wizard award happened some years later from Smithsonian.
We had fun! A key point or two revolved around this question of what kind of 21st century corporation will prove most successful and why, and where does Cisco fit in that new world. We'll have a video of the talk online presently!
Joel Bion, Cisco's SVP for R&D, gave me a tremendous introduction, noting that I'd been a key figure in cementing Cisco's first industrial order back in the early days (1986/7), and it accounted for two things -- in 1989 when he joined, it was about 25% of Cisco's annual revenue, and more importantly, HP provided the reference site of value for their sales efforts with other corporations. He provided this without my telling him the story -- amazing to me, but then, he's been there since the early days.... I linked it to the Medal of Defiance in terms of some of the HP exec's enthusiasm for inking this deal -- in truth, the system we built is why the Wizard award happened some years later from Smithsonian.
We had fun! A key point or two revolved around this question of what kind of 21st century corporation will prove most successful and why, and where does Cisco fit in that new world. We'll have a video of the talk online presently!
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