The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company [Hardcover]

David Packard (Author), David Kirby with Karen Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 1995

In the fall of 1930, David Packard left his hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, to enroll at Stanford University, where he befriended another freshman, Bill Hewlett. After graduation, Hewlett and Packard decided to throw their lots in together. They tossed a coin to decide whose name should go first on the notice of incorporation, then cast about in search of products to sell.

Today, the one-car garage in Palo Alto that housed their first workshop is a California historic landmark: the birthplace of Silicon Valley. And Hewlett-Packard has produced thousands of innovative products for millions of customers throughout the world. Their little company employs 98,400 people and boasts constantly increasing sales that reached $25 billion in 1994.

While there are many successful companies, there is only one Hewlett-Packard, because from the very beginning, Hewlett and Packard had a way of doing things that was contrary to the prevailing management strategies. In defining the objectives for their company, Packard and Hewlett wanted more than profits, revenue growth and a constant stream of new, happy customers.

Hewlett-Packard' s success owes a great deal to many factors, including openness to change, an unrelenting will to win, the virtue of sustained hard work and a company-wide commitment to community involvement. As a result, HP now is universally acclaimed as the world' s most admired technology company; its wildly successful approach to business has been immortalized as "The HP Way."

In this book, David Packard tells the simple yet extraordinary story of his life' s work and of the truly exceptional company that he and Bill Hewlett started in a garage 55 years ago.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In a dry fashion, Packard tells the true story of the mighty Hewlett-Packard Company: Two college buddies begin a partnership by producing an audio oscillator in a Palo Alto garage in 1938 and wind up 60 years later with a $25-billion-dollar electronics company on their hands. He wraps the book up tidily with a timeline of the company's development milestones. Packard chalks up success to many things, including government contracts during wartime, but mostly to the company's management outlook ("The HP Way"), which champions openness, honesty, and flexibility throughout the organization. Entrepreneurs and technologists alike will be interested in this journey of an American giant. Packard's tone sometimes veers toward the self-congratulatory, but in this case, it somehow seems justified. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

Hewlett-Packard is a high-tech company with over $25 billion in sales; the Hewlett-Packard way has obviously been quite successful. Here, one of the company's founders tells the story of its growth. Packard frequently becomes nostalgic, such as when talking about his first vacuum tube. He explains why Hewlett-Packard follows strong management practices: management by objectives, educational subsidies for employees, profit sharing, and giving authority to employees closest to the customers. Packard also served as a Defense Department official and in doing so chose to give $20 million to charity to avoid ethical conflicts. The company history Packard relates is, however, an uncritical review. The cassettes, narrated by Martin Bookspan, are of limited use because they offer little discussion of ideas that a person in business might adopt. Not an important purchase.?Mark Guyer, Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Collins; 1st edition (May 24, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887307477
• ISBN-13: 978-0887307478
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #862,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a good book after you get used to the painfully dry style., February 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (Paperback)

They say engineers (myself included) are generally poor writers; then David Packard must be an absolute genius. David Packard's book (as has his company been one) is an important contribution and a must read for company executives. But it does require patience and dedication -- like the one he and Bill Hewlette had to endure to make HP a success! Once you get through the first 6 or 7 chapters the book becomes and absolute GEM. Until then -- and unfortunately you almost have to read the first few chapters -- the book is a positive cure for sleeplessness. HP's dedication to innovation, its financial frugality (which shows up in Dave Packard not hiring a good ghost writer or editor) and the importance of Management by Objectives, Decenterlized Organization, and Management by Walkign Around, Expected Returns on R&D are only some of the Gems hidden in this book; but you do have to mine to get to them and IMHO it is a worthwhile pain to go through. What also comes through is how HP slipped their biggest chance of dominating the chip and computer market by not taking the risk and cancelling the OMEGA project. Reading David Packard's fatalistic justifications is worth 10 times the price of the book. Also little credit is given to the inventor of the calculator that made HP a house hold name, and no mention is made of procurement of Appolo(until in Appendix 2)!!! Admittedly, I am at fault for having difficulty with this book. I read it after reading "Hard Drive, Bill Gatees and the Making of Microsoft Empire" by Jamve Wallace and Jim Erickson. These gentlemen are professional writers/journalists that know how to grab ones attention and keep it. Reading them before "The HP Way", which incidently and surprisingly was rated the best business book of 1996 by Amazon readers, is like watching the movie Titanic, and then going home to suffer through 6 hours of Mr. Rogers!!! But I do still recommend the book not to mention that I am more inclined to one day work for the comapny! Cheers, --- Esfandiar

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Venture spirit reminder, June 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (Paperback)

I've read this book to find out what motivated the people and companies in Silicon Valley which many other contries want to have one in their territory. It gave me lesson that the venture needs to be based on the acknowledgement of the understanding that the world is complex. Once take this granted,you can understand Hewlett and Packard did a great job and put a milestone to those who still can't understand the complexity of the society

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Very Simple: The HP Way, March 1, 2001

By 

Scott L. Lewis (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (Paperback)

Considering that an electrial engineer like David Packard could have written a, boring, detailed account of how he and Bill Hewlett pieced together their very first piece of equipment in the now famous Pal Alto, California garage. This book surprises you with its simple down to earth account of how it all began and how they built this tiny garage shop into the multi billion dollar company that it is today. They did it not only with a strong belief in new and innovative products, but in the people that helped build the company. This simple belief built the foundation into the HP way of corporate greatness.

The book was simply written, but it is this style that allowed me to understand the friendship between David Packard and Bill Hewlett and the corporate culture that they developed at HP. I would recommend this book to anyone that is a manager or executive to benchmark the corporate culture that HP established or applaud yourself if you have already embraced the HP Way. I trully believe, as David Packard and Bill Hewlett did, that you need a strong belief in people to make a company succeed.