The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company (Paperback)

by David Packard (Author) "AS WE GET OLDER we have the opportunity to look back over many years and see how certain events, seemingly unimportant at the time, had..." (more)
Key Phrases: Bill Hewlett, Palo Alto, New York (more...)

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.

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 the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Collins (June 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887308171
• ISBN-13: 978-0887308178
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #765,972 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 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

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Venture spirit reminder, June 20, 1999

By A Customer

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

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Very Simple: The HP Way, March 2, 2001

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

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.