Phil McKinney is one of my favorite "new" colleagues from HP. Phil came to HP a decade after I left, and long after Dave and Bill, and Bagley and Ely and even John Young. But he made a mark, and an indelible impression on me. Here's a bit of his vitae from his LinkedIn page.
- The key thing about Phil is that he is all about innovation, and of course, our book focused on the way that HP uniquey dealt with innovation -- recall the title--INNOVATION and Business Transformation (thereby). Phil brought an newly invigorated innovation instinct to the HP PC business after they had long conceded to the Wintel designs, and aftewards, he founded a brilliant Innovator's Network with a regular blog and podcast to bring the story to others. Here's the lead-in to that group:
- The Innovators Network (TI.N) is the innovation newsroom that tells the full story of innovation and the people behind them.
We founded The Innovators Network on the belief that innovation is essential to addressing the world’s most pressing problems and opportunities.
We aim to publish high-quality, solution-based journalism that tells the true stories of innovation. We believe that understanding the stories behind the innovations it can empower readers to make informed decisions.
Our digital media platform will shine a light on innovation in all its forms — through articles, podcasts, videos, and events. The forms of innovation cover a wide spectrum, from social to health to technological innovation. - The reason I am including it today in our HP Blog is to amplify the message he broadcast recently:
Let me put a simple story around this. When John Young took over HP from Bill Hewlett (Packard had already ceded the CEO role to Bill), John wanted to stimulate more innovation, and one possible option was to increase the stock option pool for inventors. In particular, greatly increase the options for 'winning products,' Since I was working for John as the newly defined Corporate Engineering Director (big title, but mostly a co-ordination role), I thought "Wow, that could be a neat contribution, that might really stimulate competitve juices."
For reasons now obscure (meaning I cannot any longer remember why), I sought out Bill Hewlett, who after all had a major hand in HP Labs for decades. I described the idea, and he listened attetively for a moment before exploding with considerable vehemence.
"Dumb, dumb, dumb," he exclaimed, and then said "Let me tell you why."
He said "Today the prize is to become a select member of HP's vaunted research labs, where essentially everyong makes roughly the same salary with the same perks, including options."
And the goal of every project is to extend the capability by a factor of ten.whether measured by speed, accurary, price, or whatever. On average, AND AT BEST, only one out of two projects will be successful. And of those successful ones, only one out of two will be adapted into a commercial division and launched to the public. And of those, only one out of two will be commercially successful. So if we reward the originators of the successful Lab project, based on division adoption, and marketplace acceptance, only one out of eight Lab researchers will qualify for these differential options. Seven out of eight will not. Or maybe more like twelve out of 13 or 19 out of 20 will not. Not very stimulating, when phrased that way.
"But" he continued, "if the Labs are given differential options based on ANY LAB PROJECT that makes a totally commercially successful record, then we can reward a panoply of Lab researchers. And maintain the value and worth and goal of seeking that 10x innnovation instead of going for low-hanging fruit that doesn't require great innovation, just classic engineering productivity."
Young and Platt and especially Carly voted for the new model, Carly including enormous sums for vapid bombastic leaders. Today HP is very much 'in tune' with normal industry practices. How has this worked out?
If you go back and examine the record, HP Labs was voted by many to be the most effective innovation central labs of any corporation in America from 1960 through about 1985, after which modest improvements rather than fundamental break-throughs became the norm. And companies like Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and later Google and Facebook and a host of small-fry spun up with new innovations while HP contributions defining new fields and technology virtually evaporated. Cause and effect?
