Help BigCo with a Mid-life Kicker
I retired from the Hewlitt-Packard Company seven years ago. This preceded the nuclear disintegration of The Company into what became five different daughter companies (the major ones being HP Inc, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, and DXC Technology). And it followed 16 years of being a manager in the fabled HP Labs (HPL).
One thing that really differentiated being at HPL from my prior 15 years at Xerox PARC (PARC) is that HPL was located at the center of HP whereas PARC was a distant, often alien satellite of Xerox. PARC tended to be more academic and business isolated, whereas HPL was tightly coupled with the business divisions and corporate functions.
I spent most of the first half of my HP career working with HP Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), and the second half working with the Personal Computing Group (PSG). IPG had very strong contacts with HPL because of the success of ink jet printing (thank the youngsters Howard Taub and Vyomesh Joshi, aka VJ). That meant direct contact with not only the execs, but also the GM’s, lab directors, product managers, and section managers (2nd level engineering managers). In other words, we could get close to the people actually making product and understand their problems directly plus explain the value to the senior management.
IPL benefited from HPL by software to do resolution synthesis, re-architecting the entire LaserJet code base, novel long lasting latex inks, ink jet itself, camera pipelines, … a very long list. For many years the pipeline was filled with a combination of tactical and strategic transfers. I kid you not: I have had VJ drop into my cubical just to talk about what is going on. Life across the product lines was in serious new growth mode until around 2005 when office and home printing got “good enough” – the point where customers really didn’t need better (image quality ~ photo quality, fast speeds, durable inks…). Sure commercial, industrial, and special use printing still had plenty of market to grow, but the printing that most people did was good enough. Then came digital photography, large format cell phones and tablets…
People like VJ have “founder DNA” (fathering HP ink jet) and many others who followed did not. Founders seem to never lose that feeling that someone is painting a target on their back and need to keep moving and advancing. Others are better at optimizing processes, extending products, and strictly controlling costs. These are a critical set of skills and are completely necessary once you stop the rapid growth part of a tech business. Many companies find their product lines in those latter stages often when facing decreasing markets.
When I worked with PSG, the PC business was already in advanced stages and had long been mostly outsourced to ODM’s for design and manufacture. PSG controlled the requirements, approval of specifications, qualification of components (very very important), supply chain purchasing and logistics (also very important), and marketing and sales.
A key search was how to differentiate the aging products by adding other functionality. Natural extensions were to go into convertible PC/tablets, cash registers, embedded controllers, and other specialty use cases. I tend to look at these as market-kickers. Things that can mitigate the downward slide of a market.
Mid-life Kickers are an area where novel technologies from NewCo’s can play a key enabling role for a BigCo.
