It’s too early to tell whether the latest cuts at Hewlett-Packard will severely reduce its role as a big-time player of innovation in Silicon Valley. But here’s the latest inside skinny about how the HP Labs in Palo Alto is doing, in today’s Mercury News story (link requires free registration, and you’ll get links to full audio files, etc; but if want to skip registration and the other stuff, just go here). Merc’s reporter Therese Poletti will be following this closely.
This comes after we’ve been hearing, in our rounds talking with VCs, about how distant the HP corporate development group is in developing relationships. Granted, this is only anecdotal, but the venture folks over at Partech International in San Francisco recently told us they never hear from HP, but they get an update from the venture folks at IBM “every six months.”
One Comment
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Mark Wendman said:
While it is turning back a page on history to compare the present HP labs to the prior HP/Agilent Labs, it is not productive to do so as Agilent carries much of the blue sky mission that HP labs used to do.
Hurd is a spot on, no nonsense leader.
HP’s mission does not include seeding new VC funded businesses.
Neither is it IBM’s business either, but they have the money to spread around maybe? Given that IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo, they gave it up, while Hurd, with his focus, does not want to spin off or split apart anything for the time being ( What a Breath of Fresh Air ! )
HP of today is fully engaged in the PC, Printer and Corporate Computing businesses, not Blue Sky R&D for the potential benefit of VCs.
( I am not denigrating VCs and Startups here, but pointing out diversions are not a good expenditure of HP’s scarce product and R&D money - it should be focussed where returns can be gained to maintain leadership in its businesses, now )
The HP Compaq merger was largely motivated by FEEs on the part of an unnamed particular, powerful, interested and conflicted party. It was not in the best interest of shareholders nor employees, despite protestations to the contrary.
Curiously the one promising aspect of the HP Compaq merger - acquisition of one of the fastest microprocessors on the planet, was thrown out the window. Very sad.
Hurd is going to ensure that mainstram products remain and retain leadership. He has visited numerous HP product development teams and reinforces the critical importance of substantive and successful product development to remain competitive and regain leadership.
Thank god for good management. Wish Hurd and HP good luck, and in the same breath, my thoughts are with the employees who will be losing their jobs.
