Stories from HP: Towards Good Working Environment Abstract

Negative population growth in developed countries, retirement of baby boomers and increasing attrition mandates organizations to evolve knowledge capturing practices. Knowledge is power and fears of marginalization are the main hindrance for experts to share knowledge. The knowledge seeker complains of enormous information they have to process and vagueness of the knowledge which they rarely to be in synchronicity with real world. Stories have the power to unravel the tacit knowledge and often provide a seamless platform to share practices which are otherwise tightly coupled with the libraries. Stories have the power to build and support social capital. For one thing, they convey the norms, values, attitudes and goals that describe the organization more completely-with more rounded context- than any other knowledge capture technique. We discuss success stories of Hewlett and Packard, one of the largest knowledge based organization. The HP WAY, which is a codebook for managing the company for decades, important for every organization and employee to leverage knowledge and improve innovation is presented in the best way to impact the readers.

The Success and Failures at Hewlett-Packard: What we can learn from / Lessons learnt /
1. Great mentorship by Terman Frederick Terman, professor and mentor to both Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, took his students to industrial visit in the San Francisco Bay area. During these trips, they visited the first generation of electronic companies. Among the companies visited were Charlie Littons lab, Kaar Engineering in Palo Alto, and Eitel-McCullough in Burlingame. They also visited Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television. These industrial visits enabled Termans students to establish connections with their future employers. In addition, these also allowed his students to learn about the state-ofthe-art in electronics, and about what were involved in running a real technology company. Packard recalls Terman saying Well as you can see, most of these successful radio firms were built by people without much education, adding those business opportunities were even greater for someone with a sound theoretical background in the field. This got us thinking1. Terman sensed that industrial revolution is giving way to knowledge revolution and future entrepreneurs are successfully based on their innovative skill and collaborative ability. These visits gave industrial insights to his students and made them prepare for a career beyond the academic labs. The students socialized contacts with successful businessmen and acquired industrial knowledge. Hewlett and Packard along with their friends then combined their knowledge to create new explicit knowledge which were products sold under HP brands. Thus when rest of the world adapted to industrial age from agrarian age, Terman ushered a knowledge based organization within Stanford University. It would take another 2 decades for Drucker to mention these traits, namely qualified formal education and team work. With time the relationship between the professor and his students blossomed. As HP started to expand, the relationship became mutually beneficial. When HP developed its first audio oscillator it was Terman prepared a list of 25 prospective buyers the company can approach with brochures. When Hewlett and Packard used to travel to New York on the look out for new talent, Terman often accompanied them. Once while lamenting about the anxiety of young engineers to get well paying jobs, Terman proposed a cooperative model wherein engineers could work in a company half time and attend Stanford the other half. Terman even said the courses could be taken in the companies

itself. Hewlett and Packard implemented this co-operative program at HP. Thus HP and Stanford Honors Cooperative program was devised to impart graduate education to talented HP associates. This innovative program was beneficial to HP as well as Stanford and proved to be a best practice for rest of the university industry programs to emulate2.

Terman developed a vision of building a huge industrial park adjoining the Stanford University. Rather magnanimously, Terman would say with HP as a model he understood the importance of locating high technology companies near universities. He recalled HP during its formative years used to operate in and out of Stanford Communication Laboratory, but now the organization hires Stanford graduates, employs faculty as consultants and makes it possible for HP engineers to obtain higher degrees at Stanford. Thus he saw a symbiotic relationship between university and the companies as a worth best practice. Finally when the University approved Termans plan to set up Stanford Industrial Park (Silicon Valley today), HP was among the first companies to move in and capitalize on the facilities3. When Terman retired from Stanford in 1965 and decided to start a project to preserve the history of high tech revolution at Stanford and IEEE, his students granted $300,000 for the project. They also included Terman as one of the directors to HP not only for his technological know how, but also as a sign of respect and gratitude for all Terman has done to Hewlett and Packard, and also to HP in large4. The relationship between Terman and his students ploughed in the University, seeded at the research labs, watered during the initial stages of HP, blossomed during their mid careers and harvested when Terman became a part of HP head quartered at Silicon Valley. Mentorship with duration of time developed into bonding trust, reinforced by the respect and gratitude they had for each other and finally ended up in great partnership. 2. Symbiosis of departments within the organization Communication between committed employees. These production people are lazy and do not adhere to standards and These design team change things everyday and they need to standardize first. These are the common complaints in any organization doing mass production with fairly big production and design teams. The companies expect standards and design documents to address the issue. People never realize the production and design teams very rarely interact on the floor.

Dave Packard joined General Electric Schenectady as junior executive with the primary objective of learning the business. The aspiring radio engineers after much frustration with refrigerator department finally get into the vacuum tube test department. The dangerous mercury tubes exploded like a grenade whenever the control element failed. When Packard was asked to supervise the production of new batch of tubes he planted himself on the floor, following each tube through every step of fabrication process. The factory workers were elated to have a person from design team on the production floor. While working with the workers, Packard observed that these people were very much committed to their job and are most eager to do the job right; the problem was that instructions from the design team were not adequate to ensure that every step would be done properly. Obviously Packard won the confidence of the management as well as commitment and trust of workers5. Among the salient features of HP way was Management by Walk Around. While all organizations were doing management by control HP conducted its business by Management by walk around. This helped HP to deploy a system wherein communication was the nerve center of the organization and issues were handled together rather than being delegated. MWA created a space for production team to exhibit the issues to the design team and an ambient atmosphere for the design team to correct the production workers. The teams realized their symbiotic relationship; mutual trust, cooperation and commitment to work being the values shared. As HP started to grow beyond the Palo Alto facility, Colorado was its preferred choice, simply because it was Packards home town. Loveland was the chosen site to manufacture of voltmeters and power supplies. As the production started, the researchers at California found it harder to learn about manufacturing issues arising out at a remote location and they could not learn how the engineers ironed out design problems and manufacturing process bugs. The production team faced lot of issues in comprehending the specifications from research headquarters. Hence the company decided to decentralize its research and HP labs could focus on more creative and advanced research. The divisional research gave the units sense of independence and pride and boosted the morale of the work force and set the precedent for other divisions to have their own research. The company recognized that communication within the verticals is more important than communication within the horizontals6. Another development observed among the corporations nowadays is to operate from exclusive corporate headquarters. With separate office the senior members work in a much serious atmosphere and could concentrate better on policies and processes. This also created a sense of pride among the employees working at the corporate headquarters. A similar effort was launched by HP to setup a corporate headquarters at 3000 Hanover drive struck the HP Way at its heart. This was gross violation of Management by Walk Around, the ground rule in HP that encouraged communication between hierarchies. The importance of symbiotic relationship was looked over and a common ground for interaction was broken. HP became an organization of many departments held together for business profits and the trust; even basic understanding between the

departments became history. Increasingly HP deviated from the HP way and became yet another company7.

3. Culture matters How values shape organization Today globalization is the buzzword and with technology transferring faster and cheaper there is a temptation to duplicate organization policies, practices and support technologies. The rapid expansion of organization to developing countries makes it duplicate the best practices from the developed countries with little or no adaptation. Yokogawa Hewlett Packard (now HP Japan) was a joint venture between the two companies. Given Japans more manufacturing and quality standards then, and HPs superior manufacturing and management policies it was agreed that HP would lead the venture. The division reported average standards in production qualities compared to other HP divisions and functioned as an outsourced production unit of HP. At one of the company events, the directors of a young YHP manager named Kenzo Sasaoka who wanted to run YHP. He said the Japanese had problem in communicating to the American boss and because of this attitudes of distrust and finger pointing have developed in the organization8. Within a year, Sasaoka was able to implement the Japanese culture of total quality manufacturing and also addressed the short comings in communication. The division reported an outstanding 10 per million failure rate, four hundred times better than best rates of other divisions. Not surprisingly the company won the Deming prize for productivity and quality in 1982. It was observed that Japanese take considerable time to make every adjustment as accurate as possible. This coupled with proper communications has resulted in outstanding product quality. Taking cue from Japanese the rest of HP divisions dedicated judicious time to make the accurate setting. 4. Listening to customers Often managers wonder why best products fail to bang the markets and translate into business results. Design process, production pipelines, marketing strategies and product pricing are reviewed. Still issues persist with salability of the product. The organizations hardly realize that no longer are they manufacturing goods for the entire markets, but they are offering services and products for customer needs.

When Hewlett and Packard developed their first product - an audio oscillator they named the model 200A and fixed $54.50 as the price. Little thinking of production, pricing or marketing went into this effort. Once it went into production HP realized that production cost itself was $65 and so the company lost $11 for each sale. Bud Hawkins, chief sound engineer at Walt Disney studios bumped into Hewlett at Portland conference in November 1938. Sensing Hawkins was interested with the audio oscillator Hewlett quoted $100 a piece, one fourth of the price of same genre product offered by General radio. Hewlett said it an estimate and the final price is negotiable. This enticed Hawkins to visit HP and ask for some modifications to the existing 200A model. This evolved as 200A model oscillator and the slightly improved product was priced at $71.50 a piece. It was a fair deal for Hawkins to upgrade his equipments and also first profitable transaction for HP9. HP has an innovative process to information gathering across the organization. This was possible because the culture of customer advocacy was fostered in the organizations. While interacting with customers, the sales engineers didnt defend the status quo or argue that the changes were impossible. The customer feedback was passed on to the design and production team and the next generation of the products are customized. So HP started sell solutions rather than hardware systems this approach enhanced companys responsiveness to changing market scenarios. 5. HP foray into China Socialization holds the key. Whenever a senior executive of a Multinational Company comes to a developing there is a lot of fun and fancy. The countrys leading politicians roll out red carpets, industrial leaders share platforms and the executive promises lot of investment into the country. Even organizations rate countries based on factors like how many top executives have visited the country, how much money they have promised to invest and how many jobs they are going to generate. They tend to treat this as a one-off visit and never in terms of longevity of relationship. Very rarely efforts are made to give the visiting dignitary hands on experience and almost no effort is made to exhibit trust. Committee on Present Danger, an American think tank visited Peoples Republic of China in 1977 on its efforts to counter Russias military capability. While discussing on these lines China expressed its vision for building a broader relationship. After deliberations with Americans it decided to invite industrialists. China took lead and invited Dave Packard, the director of HP who has already visited the country few years back. Packard saw an opportunity and included his wife Lucile and Liu, an engineer from HP in his team. While Packard gave the Chinese a visit of research facilities he would like to visit, he was invited for a reception at the Great Hall of people. Later Packard was taken to visit a couple of defense factories developed with Russias help. The Chinese passionately exhibited their outdated facilities and Packard commended the work though he understood that their equipments were at least 25 years out of date. Given the Chinese high context culture, Packard understood their needs and wished to arrange

sessions on HPs work in related fields. When a joint venture was proposed during the final days of his tour, Packard expressed his doubts about the modalities and operation policies in the communist country. The Chinese put the ball back into his court by saying HP can define the rules. Thus entrusted by the Chinese, Packard invited his hosts to America for further talks. Packard treated them at his guests at Merced ranch and later at his Big Sur residence. Later in 1983 China invited HP board for business and HP today operates several manufacturing plants in China. China on its part acquired a fledging electronics-manufacturing capability10. Countries and organizations need to treat visiting dignitaries with open mind, trust and express interest in building long term relationships which would be mutually beneficial. 6. Building Trust the innovative way by benevolence, sharing successes and respecting individuals. A crux today is how organizations manage with highly talented successful people. The company has doled out pay hikes, bonus, incentives and even promotions, still attrition remains an issue. Within two years of its inception HP handed out bonus checks to employees. This was done under extraordinary circumstances. The cash strapped company needed the capital for its surging orders, the partners had to reinvest their profits and also the Second World War was fast enveloping the entire world. This act built trust and motivated the employees to work for the organization. When reserve troops were called for the Second World War Hewlett had to report to army services and Packard had to manage the surging orders without his partner and workforce comprised of elderly and women. He spent days and nights in the company under pressure to perform for the trust of Hewlett, growth of HP and supplying critical war instruments to the nation. Packard billed him for a salary less than Hewletts army salary and invested all profits into the company. In 1959, within a year of going public HP offered employee stock option and further Packard would say the most important reason to go public was to broaden the ownership of the company and facilitate takeovers by stock swap option. Many HP employees who utilized this option had millions on their stocks by the time they retired11. Lucile Packard, wife of Hewlett Packard instigated a new tradition at HP. She started the practice of buying a wedding gift for every employee who married and a baby blanket for every family having a baby12. The wedding gift and baby blanket which the employees see everyday in their house reinforced their commitment to HP and made the entire family develop a trust towards the company. Today many organizations gift their employees T shirts, Coffee cups and Caps with company logos and values. These efforts often make the employee a proud ambassador of the company.

Digital Cameras and mobile phones with cameras prohibited; These products are for use within the company premises only, using it outside or for non official purposes may end up with termination and sue process of law. These are some billboards in leading knowledge based organizations. These organizations consider technological theft is a major threat. They see lot of meaning in electronic documents, emails and prototypes of products developed. They seldom realize that the most critical resources walk out at 6 PM. Bill Hewlett during one of his weekend visits to HP factory at Palo Alto went to the stores to pickup a microscope and noticed that it is locked up in the shelves. He knocked off the padlock and left a note saying never again instruments should be locked up13. HP exhibited its trust on its employees by leaving tools and products on the floor rather than locking them on stores. HP felt even if employees took this home there are working on some unfinished task. The company also felt these promoted trust, commitment and innovation, in some cases. Later in 1970s which recession creeping world over due to variety of reasons every organization had to layoff part of their workforce. HP being one of the benefactors of the boom was hit by a variety of factors like winding up of Vietnam War and NASA Apollo program and the oil crisis. While organizations were discussion about the imminent layoffs, HP introduced a Nine-Day fortnight wherein employees would work for nine days out of every two weeks 10 % curt in work schedule with a corresponding 10% cut in pay14. The Nine-Day fortnight program produced an upwelling of gratitude, even love for the company among the employees. The company made it clear that the employees would not be handed out pink slips for no fault of theirs. The employees enjoyed longer weekends in the ranches provided by HP itself and when the economy recovered they were ready to commit, reflect and deliver on what was expected and more. This act of benevolence would build loyalty towards HP in employees families transcending generations, and former employees would travel from France to vote against Fioranas audacious merger of HP with Compaq. While organizations were exhibiting their open door policies and access to people across hierarchy, HP had a different Open Door policy. This inventive and powerful tool enabled employees to raise their concerns even to the level of CEO or chairmen of the board. Apart from this was the policy of common workspace for employees to simulate mutual learning. The made the junior cadres imagine as if Hewlett and Packard were people next door and acted as a deterrent against high handedness by the managers. Not in mere words, HP implemented this to assure self respect, trust and safety for each employee. After their retirement from HP, the founder directors came across a complaint from a woman about sexual harassment and manhandling of authority by a senior manager. The corporate human relations director took personal interest in the complaint and ensured a fast thorough investigation on the issue. Within weeks the erring manager was dismissed from the company and the writing on the wall was that HP valued each of its employees and any act that undermines the individuals self respect and reputation would be handled with iron fists.

In order to control slippages HP asked each division to cut operating costs by 10 %. A new manager from Ampex Corporation fired his junior executive over a meeting. The dismissed employee raised the issue to Bill Hewlett, the director of HP. Hewlett issued a memo to all divisions saying the company wanted cost cuts by efficient operations and not by firing associates. Hewlett made it clear that it is not HP-like to make employees face the brunt of industry. Adding to that, each individual should be guided and even if termination is the only alternative, the victim should be advised and the case should be properly documented15. HP was the first organization to award one of its employees Medal of defiance, that too for defiance of the CEOs word. The CEO who asked the engineer to abandon the project awarded the engineer with a medal for extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering duty. The story goes like this. Hewlett and Packard were on a visit to Loveland division of the company and he bumped into the large screen oscilloscope which Chuck Jones wanted to develop as a computer display. Not impressed neither with the product nor with the idea Packard asked the division to stop the work on that project. The enthusiastic engineer went on a tour across the country and discussed the salability of the product with potential customers. And when the founders came to the Loveland division office they were told Joness product was under production. To the furious founders Jones would reply saying What you said was that you didnt want to see it in the lab, and its not. Its in production. HP sold 17,000 Chuck Joness renegade monitor and generated revenue of $35 million on that product16. The organization culture made Jones function not only as design engineer, but also made him make a market study on the product he was developing. 7. Thinking beyond profits The main objective of a commercial organization is to make profits. But for many organizations profiteering becomes an obsession and kills the organization at times. Aspects like building trust, motivating teams and loyalty are fast becoming things of past. It is important to note that the first blocks of the billions of dollars Packard and Hewlett donated to philanthropy started with $5 grant in the year 1939. The social commitment started not on one fine day when they were founders of HP, but within a couple years of establishment of an organization by unknown Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. In 1948 at a conference of CEOs, Packard suggested that businesses had responsibilities beyond making a profit for their shareholders. When rest of the leaders announced that profit was the solo motive and labor can be bought and sold on market, Packard raised and told them HP had important responsibility to our employees, to our customers, to our suppliers and to welfare of the society at large 17. Of course HP did stand up to the words of its founders for decades to come. Loyalty has been one of HPs key to success over the years. While designing the cabinets for 200B model Hewlett and Packard decided to go for sheet-metal cabins. Enrie Schiller was their obvious choice because of logistics reasons. When HP began to spread its wings, Schiller was still its preferred supplier and even the founders would stop by his shop even though the old

crusty old would grumble as if he did not want to see them. Dave Packard who did not carry any reminiscence of the Addison garage or the first oscillator developed by HP would still carry along Schiller till the old man retired. Thus HP valued the individual and not the place or product. After Hewlett left for army during the Second World War, HP took the ITT order for fixed frequency crystal oscillator. Without much expertise and technology know how Packard had to hunt for talents outside the organization. As crisis brings best out of men two men joined HP at that time and helped HP come out in flying colors. Bill Doolittle and Noel Eldred who shouldered the responsibility in Hewletts absence were decorated these two men as vice presidents of a much bigger HP. While servicing the ITT order HP struck a dead end with an exhausted workforce and deadline slippage, and to make things worse payments from ITT were defaulted. Packard made an emergency call to Harold Buttner and understanding the scenario Buttner wired the funds which gave HP the breathing space. Later when Buttner retired from ITT as a sign of loyalty he was offered a place at HP board. More importantly HP implemented the humane approach to smaller vendors which benefited the organization in its early years18. During the first two decades of its operation, HP produced limited number of products and the distributed network of sales persons across the country served the business well. In the early 60s the company realized that often the sales representatives had disproportionate share of profits and to improve the productivity HP had to cut costs here. Instead of destroying the current sales teams, HP proposed and convinced the sales teams that business demands them to become sales divisions of HP. In most cases HP was generous with the sales teams and later the founders would say main driver for these decisions were loyalty to the sales representatives and also recognition of the fact that the sales representatives knew the customers better than the company19. Jack Milchor and his team of engineers went to Packard in 1960 and talked about semi conductor industry and the possibility of integrated circuits which would replace the current cranky system with a state-of-art piece reliable product. Packard impressed about the project invited them for a joint venture namely, HP associates with Jack as the president. Packard said HP will have the option of buying out the 50% share of Jack and his associates in the venture. Packard said the price would be based on current sales of HP from the contributions of HP associates and the ensuing profits. % years later Packard asked Jack and his team to decide a fair price for the buyout. After much discussions Jack came up with a thick flipchart presentation which detailed the lowest possible and highest possible deals. He stressed that higher the price more the credit for his team. Packard, in true HP style even without flipping through the charts offered a price that was 20% premium on the maximum price quoted20. Thus Packard really valued the intellectual contribution of Jack and his team while doling a generous buyout offer. HP did live through the words of its founders and carried along all partners as it grew. 8. Flat organization Within HP and beyond office. Livid with GE memories and experiences at Stanford, Hewlett and Packard decided make HP a level playing field. They wanted to provide a comfort zone for each associate and freedom to voice opinions as if they were owners of their processes. They believed that

this would provide a fertile ground for innovation and make HP a committed motivated organization to handle changing markets and withstand the withers of recessions. Annual picnics were much awaited events when Packard and Hewlett would serve the food for all and use this opportunity to understand their employees and their families. The picnics were self managed with every department bringing parts of the food and HP employees had a chance to learn more about their colleagues and develop a relationship beyond the walls of HP21. The organization simulated these socialization initiatives by purchasing ranches and vast tracks of land. These places of retreat were open to families of HP associates throughout the year became a third space for them to build relationship. With the growth of company the organization wide picnics were impossible, but senior executives accompanied smaller teams. These were events when the CEO might bump into a conversation between two junior executives. Separate retreats were arranged for senior executives and HPs corporate objectives were discussed and sorted out in Sonoma retreat! The organization also took every effort to make the workspace as social and comfortable for the employees. On the eve of Christmas employees were handed over bonus checks and senior management would join them to a party on the Christmas at the nearest pub. Beer bust on Friday afternoon22 became an organization wide practice wherein senior associates would hand over beers to all HP associates as a premature way to enjoy the weekend. Coffee breaks were introduced, which made all associates gathered at a common time twice everyday over a cup of tea. Associates across departments had a chance to exchange short yet very important tidbits which would improve the productivity of the organization. A study shows that the gain in productivity is much more than the cost involved in sponsoring the break. Communication luncheons were encouraged where managers were barred and junior associates would discuss on company policies, even criticize it at times. Supervisory training was one much problem discussed at communication luncheons across the organization and provided a chance to address the issues before the issue could hurt the organizations interests. Hewlett introduced hat-wearing process to foster innovation in the company23. This became a bible for mature managers to handle hot innovative juniors. When a junior associate approaches the manager with an idea, the manager would wear the enthusiastic hat. He would listen, express excitement, appreciate and simulate the process. Later the manager would approach the junior associate with inquisitive hat, where he raises pointed questions probing the idea. This effort is more to direct the idea rather than to kill it. Later wearing the decision hat the manager would arrive at a decision on the idea with appropriate logic and sensitivity. The junior associate completely stands by the decision even if the decision was against the idea. So the shots in HP were not called by the bosses, but were evolved by the entire organization. 9. Blind spots

Organizations today acknowledge, creating a knowledge enabled workspace is important to attract innovative brains. So they compete with each other on positioning the organization in the market and promise greener pastures for prospective employees. The zest to attract knowledge fades within the organization and often organizations fail to recognize the greatest innovation within. In knowledge based organizations the employees attach more loyalty to their practice than to their employer. It comes to a flashpoint when rationale of practice is compromised or rather surrendered to authority. Hidetsugu Yagi, the director of Japans civilian research during second world was instrumental in developing the incendiary balloons across the pacific. Yagi was a leading expert on antennas and his reflector antennas are used in televisions even today. Yet Yagi became a very cooperative to the American soldiers after his surrender. They understood Yagis freedom was seriously undermined and he was made to work on projects which he himself knew were infeasible. This made him turn against his former bosses and a patriotic Japanese scientist turned into an invaluable catch for the Americans, revealing all technological information and pointers to knowledge experts24. As knowledge driven organizations look up to manage attrition rates they need to address the issue of committed employees frustrated by organization practices and policies. A frustrated employee is a greater threat to an organization than a sad employee. Many companies advertise that they have the best technology, thousands of patents and most innovative employees. Every thing is fine, but at times they do not translate into business results. The mindset of the people and the process and the practices of the organization play a key role here. During the Second World War the Japanese navy developed a product called IFF, Identification of Friend or Foe. These can detect whether a plane is friendly or enemy one and attack if it is a foe. This was a celebrated automated response mechanism of the much-vaunted Japanese war array. The poor communication, dangerous degree of competition and lack of cooperation between the Army and Navy resulted in developing a system in which the Japanese army planes would be shot down by their own Navy if it flies over the zone25. Proper communication, healthy competition and comprehensive deployment are important for translating innovations and advancements into business results. The case of Tom Osborne is an epitome example for knowledge walking out of the organization with a half baked product. Tom Osborne, a graduate from University at California at Berkeley joined SCM, the calculator giant on the 60s. Osborne was hired to evaluate the possibility of using Nickel off-spec diodes instead of traditional diodes on its electronic calculators. Osborne studied the proposal and conveyed to the management the infeasibility of the project on performance grounds. The senior management bye passed Osbornes assessment and pumped in more money into the Nickel off-spec diode project. The frustration and humiliation made Osborne walk out of the organization and pursuer individual research on calculator design. Osborne developed a prototype and did performance study on the product. While talks with Friden Corp, another calculator giant after many rounds of negotiation Osborne realized that the company was interested in buying his technology in order to kill his product rather than to develop it. This frustrated Osborne and around this time he had a chance to meet Paul Stoft, the HP

Manager through one of his contacts. Impressed with the idea of Green Machine, Stoft invited Barney Oliver, the head of HP labs to watch Osbornes presentation. HP integrated Osbornes Green machine hardware with McMillan and Volders CORDIC algorithm and produced one of the greatest calculators of the time much appreciated by its customers26. Steve Wozniak joined Advanced Products Divisions of HP and was happy with his work and life. Spending his leisure time trying out newer products at Atari game room he developed interest in programming for consumer applications. He shouldered the responsibility of delivering the game, Breakout with Steve Jobs though Jobs took the money and recognition of the product. With avid interest in programming, Wozniak joined the Homebrew Computer Club. It was a club of computer fanatics who meet every month swapping notes and helping each other. Wozniak developed his computer and along with another Homebrewer and HP colleague Myron Tuttle, made a presentation to his bosses at HP about the computer they have developed. Though Wozniak tried to convince his seniors, his ides was rebutted saying HP doesnt want to be in this market. This was the time HP was expanding to computer markets and buoyant with the success of HP-35 and HP-65. A calculator watch codenamed Cricket was at its final stages of development. Also the organization was growing too large and showing signs of hierarchy and individual aptitude in decision making. Practices like coordinated decisions, hat wearing process and logical thinking were getting erased from the organizations memory. Though Steve Jobs made an offer to Wozniak to join him and produce the computer, Wozniak relentlessly to convince HP on his product. Finally he wanted the company to allow him to use the technology on his new venture the greatest proponent of innovation and ideas at HP, Bill Hewlett signed the letter allowing Wozniak to take his product from HP27. Rest was history with Apple becoming a new era in personal computer markets. The growth of organization and focus on specific product lines have made HP loose an opportunity which would have given the company a path breaking entry into the markets of personal markets. Organizations need to develop the best practices across departments at all times and need to make conscious effort to sustain the practices they have developed over time. Conclusion As organizations evolve over time it is often the most responsive organizations which ramp up with the environment and sustain success. Organizations need to recall their best practices and adapt them to real life scenarios. Organizations need to develop a culture of sharing and evolve practices and policies to capture experts tacit knowledge. With globally dispersed workforce organizations need to explore video conferencing and a shared space for sharing stories with a minimum structure to facilitate their recall but improve creativity. Organizations also need to share failure and stories about future to inspire and prepare listeners to innovate and sustain learning within the organization.

Reference: All references are quoted from the book BILL & DAVE How Hewlett and Packard built the Worlds Greatest Company. Page numbers are mentioned with each reference 1. Industrial visits- Page 41 2. HP Stanford Honors program Page 115. 3. Silicon valley Page 135-137. 4. Fund for research Page 208. 5. Experience at GE- Page 48 6. Colorado research center- Page 172. 7. Corporate Headquarters at Silicon Valley- Page 337 8. Japan HP- Kenzo Sasaoka Page 169-170. 9. Deal with Hawkins, Chief sound Engineer Walt Disney- Page 75 10. Corporate Diplomacy Page 305-308. 11. Stock option - Page 159-160. 12. Family gift Page 130 The HP WAY. 13. Hewlett padlock snap Page 104-105. 14. Nine-day fortnight Page 251-252. 15. Dismissing Employees Page 249-250. 16. Chuck Jones- Page 225. 17. CEO conference- Page 117. 18. Loyalty Page 83-86. 19. Sales devision Page 195-196. 20. Jack Melchor- Page 191-192. 21. Company picnic Page 125-127, 144. 22. Beer bust Page 129. 23. Hat wearing process- Page 229. 24. Hidetsugu Yagi, Japan Civil research head. Page 92. 25. Identification of Friend or Foe- Page 93. 26. Tom Osborne- Page 181-184. 27. Steve Wozniak- Page 277-280.