Recommended Reading -
"The HP WAY - How Bill Hewlett And I Built Our Company"
By Dave Packard | Harper-Collins, New York, NY - 1995

I have always had great admiration for the Hewlett-Packard Company, producers of electronic devices. Their products are always of high quality and their presentation is always first class. When I traveled to Stanford University and the Silicon Valley, I visited the headquarters of H-P and took photos. H-P is often given credit for starting the launch of Silicon Valley. Many of the principles that Dave Packard writes about are principles that I hold for our organization. Here are some excerpts from this excellent book:

We designated this first product the Model 200A because we thought the name would make us look like we'd been around for a while. We were afraid that if people knew we'd never actually developed, designed, and built and finished product, they'd be scared off.

Our first sales representative emphasized the importance of our offering more than one product because a single product rarely made a successful company.

Our people worked very hard, and we wanted to recognize and encourage their contribution. To this day, H-P has a profit sharing program that encourages teamwork and maintains that important link between employee effort and corporate success.

We built a good foundation from which to grow. We maintain close ties with the university, especially with the engineering and business schools.

Good news products are the lifeblood of technical companies such as ours. A strong R & D effort has always been the driving force behind product contribution at H-P. One of our most important management tasks is maintaining the proper balance between short term profit performance and investment for future strength and growth.

We started a monthly publication in 1949 called the H-P Journal, which described the technology used in the development of important new products. Although this information was useful to our competitors, we thought the benefits outweighed this disadvantage.

To be useful an invention must not only fill a need, it must be an economical and efficient solution to that need.

Written by Howard J. Leonhardt