Wow! I was extremely privileged last night, to be invited to and able to attend the 50th Anniversary of HP Laboratories, in the Customer Service Center of Building 3U at the 1501 Page Mill Site. This was put on by HP Inc.
It was led by Shane Wall, Global Head of HP Labs for HP Inc., and featured CEO Dion Weisler, plus a panel of two Board members (Stacy Brown-Philpott, and Aida Alvarez) and HP's HR VP (Tracy Keogh), moderated by a dynamite Fortune magazine writer (Leena Rao).
The theme of the evening was "Where HP is going over the next 30 years" and how Diversity is a big part of that perspective. Dion gave voice to that with thoughts about creativity and innovation coming from disparate perspectives--he has lived and worked in ten countries on 4 continents. He had a terrific example of a Japanese engineer trying to build a 'noiseless fan" for a small laptop, who found inspiration in the silent flight of an owl when he went on a nature trip.
I watched our big snowy owl circle our trees at dawn yesterday, probably three major swoops, all silent. I never tire of watching (and "listening") to owls; we had a Great Horned Owl on our Colorado ranch when I was deep into Logic Analyzers--though I cannot claim the owl helped me invent.
Turns out Aida Alvarez is on HP's Board, was the first Latino Cabinet member for any U.S. President, and long on the Walmart board. I used my iPhone (wish HP had invented it) to find my daughter's bio--Sharon Orlopp, for those of you interested. She retired last year as Sr. V.P. of Walmart with the title Global Chief Diversity Officer. Turns out Aida told a story about Sharon without naming her--building much higher diversity success for 2 million employees.
Natch, I had to ask Alvarez later, and yes, she got excited and said, "Yup, Sharon is 'the one' and if you're her dad, that's a great link for these values--they might just be the OLD HP. And I thought YES, INDEED.
Shane at the end intro'd a few guests--three of us were HP Labs alumni (only three? like where was Joel Birnbaum, John Doyle, Gary Gordon, Zvonko Fazarinc or so many others who did great things). There was Chandrakant Patel, HP Senior Fellow and Chief Engineer and there was Keith Moore (who invited me). And only about 15 other HP folk. Turns out the room was MOSTLY journalists, and HP was giving them 2 days of 'view' into the future.
That future revolved around 4 fundamental trends--1. Megacities (10M or more folk) will go from 10 in the world today to 50 by mid-century; 2. More than 50% of people alive in 2050 will be older than 50 years old; 3. The Dark Continent will light up, as will every home on the globe; and 4. Hyper-globalization will result in hyper-localization as 3D mfg takes over 'everywhere' for all products.
It also involves 4 major technologies that HP is working hard on--1. 3d Transformation of Mfg; 2. Internet of "ALL THINGS" (stronger than Cisco's pitch); 3. Microfluidics via MEMS machines; and 4. Hypermobility
CEO Dion captured this well, saying the Old HP used to invent, refine, and then CREATE NEW CATEGORIES, and that somewhere about 20 years ago the CATEGORY CREATION ceased. He expects and plans to stimulate its return, and he vowed that supporting Diversity is the best way.
I was delighted with the entire evening. More though from a "historian's view" in the next post.
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