Posted on 03/06/2005 7:51:17 AM PST by HolgerDansk
bttttt
A marketing / management type, from the school of thought that managenment is management, and it's not really necessary for one to know intimately the business or technology one is managing. Carly was a huge departure from Messrs Hewlett and Packard, two of the original garage-guys, forerunners to Jobs and Gates.
Ah, DEC. The only computer I ever truly loved was a VAX. Those were the days . . . (sigh)
;)
Unlikely since Carly is a Republican..
So is Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and John Mccain. What does being Republican mean anymore?
Bill Gates recently said that American High Schools are obsolete. I think it goes higher than that. With people like Fiorina ruining companies, business will start thinking that "higher" education is also obsolete.
And yet all the really cool stuff still seems to come from this country , doesn't it?
The Soviet Union produced many more highly skilled engineers, and PhDs per capita than America, yet not one significant techological advance came from them. Why?
America's strength is our creativity and dynamism. It's not about who manufactures the microchips anymore. It's about who makes those microchips do new and interesting things.
None of America's apparent competitors can even come close to us in the rate of new ideas. That's something that's difficult to quantify in things like the number of engineering students, etc.
Let the Chinas and Taiwans mass produce the small electronics; we don't need to. Their cultures are just not conducive to coming up with ideas like Google, Ebay, Dell, Microsoft, Walmart, Yahoo, etc.
As long as America has the lions share of new ideas, our economy will still be on top.
MBAs and lawyers will destroy this country. Corporate CEOs have devasted many companies. Gates, Jobs, and the Waltons are some of the few people running corporations that care about the long-term success of the company. Many CEOs run from company to company, generating short-term gains while gutting the underlying structure that made the company successful. I don't think Carly could have wrecked HP more effectively if she had been on a search and destroy mission. However, she spouts the new world socialist MBA BS that the financial press loves, and poses well with her arms crossed while standing in front of tech looking devices. In short, she's the perfect empty skirt for a non-thinking press.
Well, I worked for a number of years in a DARPA/ARPA/WhateverFedGrantYouCanGet funded tech company. I can tell you right now that there is a whole cottage industry of companies that exist only to gobble up these grants, and NEVER endeavor to produce actual salable product.
They don't just care less if the product is a success in the marketplace or not, they don't want to take the effort and risk of selling and supporting the technology. It would distract them from writing another grant proposal - which to them is a guaranteed source of income.
Do they care that they promised the government that the goal was to jump start a commercial technology market for the betterment of the country? Heck no!
Does the government care that these companies never fulfill their promise to start a commercial company based around the technology they're underwriting? Heck No! It isn't their hard earned money - why should they care!!!
As you might tell, I'm rather bitter about the whole experience. There was a lot of mental firepower - my own included - being drawn to these sham government contract companies. The country would have been better served if these people went to VC or a bank or their family for funding - the need to pay investors back would have driven them to actually produce usable product.
The damage to HP and the U.S. technology industry at large may already be irreversible. If we start investing today and let our engineers play we might have something exciting to show people in 2010. That's a long time to wait for the next big wow.
This is true in all industries. Some of the best basic research that is occurring is the "off the books" stuff that the engineers do on their own or hide within other projects. If you can't "prove" a short return-on-investment, management doesn't want to hear about it.
Probably one of the best threads I've seen posted on this forum - and that is saying a lot.
So where do companies like H.P., Canon, and Epson come up with the rocket scientists that think up the order numbers for their ink and toner cartridges? Only an engineer could come up with something so confusing.
For example you want a Canon ink cartridge for your BJC-2100 ink jet printer. The cartridge says BCI-21, but the order number is CNM-0945A003, unless you want a twin pack which is CNM-F470731TPK. God help you if you are trying to oder a L-50 toner cartridge, the number is CNM-6812A001AA.
I sell these things for a living and I really feel for my customers, they constantly need my help. The first company that can come up with simple order numbers will gain huge customer loyalty. The closest so far is Brother.
The masses need to work somewhere other than Wal-Mart, McDonalds ot the state/federal government.
There are a lot of companies that had great ideas that failed due to lack of capital.
"many of these ideas came from German scientists brought to the US after WWII. I was looking at some of the captured German designs for aircraft, and we are still using them in the most recent designs"
We won the space race because our German scientists were better than the Soviets German scientists.....
In China and India most likely.
Hahahaha, screw snazzy, I want the damn thing to work! The only problem I've had with an eMachine is my kids going to sites loaded with worms and virii. Of course that will kill any computer...
I've heard bad things about other computer mfgs. So if they're all junk, why not go for the most reasonably priced junk.
Great post.
"This article is so true of many companies, no matter what industry they're in..."
Agreed. But it is important to note that while HP is, for all intents and purposes, now dead, it doesn't mean technology innovation is dead.
Carly came to HP and lacking any really good ideas, she decided to coast......A company, especially a technology company, can have a few really good quarters of financial performance if one cuts things like research, maintenance, and other things that can be deferred.
Carly learned this from AT&T, carried it to Lucent, and HP....a "Me First" attitude that was not in the best interests of her company or her stockholders.
That said, like everything else, it takes money to develop stuff and sometimes you have more money for innovation than at other times. A LOT of technology companies were hurting in the 2000-2003 timeframe....those that survived cut everything, just to keep the lights on - and their product lines suffer down the road because of it - and it is apparent now in some cases.
Do not mistake the death of the old stalwarts of technology and innovation with the death of technology itself. America is still the leader.
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