Mark Hurd’s departure from HP caused quite a fervor. After all, what’s juicier than a sex scandal and defecting to the competition? But it gets better: IBM wants to get in on the fun. This isn’t TMZ, but it’s pretty rich nonetheless. From a story published in the Wall Street Journal on September 15, 2010:
In a rare public broadside, IBM Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano said he doesn’t worry about companies such as H-P that have slashed their investments in core technologies and need to make expensive acquisitions to keep up. “H-P used to be a very inventive company,” Mr. Palmisano said in an interview at a Wall Street Journal event on Tuesday.
Palmisano went on to suggest that Mark Hurd’s focus on cost-cutting has undercut HP’s ability to innovate. While people at HP might disagree, Palmisano believes there’s a serious kink in HP’s innovation supply chain. On the other hand, Palmisano praised the efforts of Oracle CEO’s Larry Ellison to invest in the development of new technologies.
One reply on “IBM’s Palmisano Rips HP for Lack of Inventiveness”
One criticism of Hurd is that he downplayed innovation at HP and just cut costs–going into exploitation mode and killing off exploration. If so, he undermined HP’s future. Morten