Summary
Robert A. Burgelman, Webb McKinney and Philip E. Meza trace Hewlett Packard through its founders and successive chief executives. Their history follows changes in the company’s businesses and examines what each leader contributed to its continuing development. A chapter on Bill Hewlett and David Packard studies the early instrument company and the leadership capabilities they established. Later chapters follow different strategic directions and the pressures placed on the organization. The authors use this history to develop a framework for the tasks of strategic leadership, the capabilities needed to carry them out and the relationship between a company’s past and future. The study also considers strategy processes, company culture, resource allocation and relations between executives and boards.
Why read it Our view
Compare the founders’ chapter with the later leadership cases. Identify which capabilities your company must keep as it grows, which must change and how the board will judge those choices.
Written about
- David PackardCompany history with a substantive founders’ chapterChapter 3, pp. 85–115, studies Hewlett and Packard’s leadership in building HP. The wider book follows later CEOs. This is a company-history connection; no Packard reading or endorsement is claimed.Source