HP
I Told the Department of Education Their Graduates Were Useless
The room went silent. But I'd been watching this crisis unfold for decades—starting on a factory floor in 1981
The WSJ Got Quarterly Reporting Wrong: A Corporate Executive's Response
Why James Mackintosh's defense of quarterly reporting ignores what actually happens in corporate boardrooms.
How to See Opportunities Others Miss
In 2005, I had a ten-minute conversation at San Jose Airport that generated billions in revenue for HP. But here's what's fascinating: three other HP executives heard the exact same conversation and saw nothing special about it. If you read Monday's Studio Notes, you
The 10-Minute Airport Conversation That Generated HP Billions
How a casual exchange at San Jose Airport became HP's gaming empire—and why most executives miss these moments entirely
5 Questions That Spot Breakthroughs Before They Happen
In October 1903, The New York Times published an editorial mocking the idea of human flight, stating that a successful flying machine might take "from one to ten million years" to develop through the efforts of mathematicians and engineers. Eight weeks later, on December 17, 1903, the Wright
I Evaluated Over 30,000 Innovation Ideas at HP: Here's Why Most Failed
Your best innovation ideas aren't losing to bad ideas – they're losing to exhaustion. I know that sounds counterintuitive. After 30 years of making billion-dollar innovation decisions at HP and CableLabs, I thought I understood why good ideas failed. Market timing. Technical challenges. Resource constraints. Sometimes that
Why 'Fail Fast' Innovation Advice Is Wrong
The most popular piece of innovation advice in Silicon Valley is wrong—and it's killing great ideas before they have a chance to succeed. I can prove it with a story about a glass of water that sat perfectly still while a car bounced beneath it. My name
Innovation Partnership Autopsy: HP, Fossil, and the Smartwatch Market
Innovation partnerships can create breakthrough markets—or hand them to competitors through terrible decisions. I know because I lived through both outcomes. Bill Geiser from Fossil and I had it exactly right. We built the MetaWatch—a smartwatch with week-long battery life, Bluetooth connectivity, and every feature that would later
How HP and Fossil Handed Apple the Smartwatch Market
The inside story of vision without execution: why being right about the future means nothing without the courage to act on breakthrough insights
I Convinced HP's Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days.
Why smart executives consistently destroy breakthrough technology. The HP Palm WebOS autopsy reveals predictable thinking patterns behind billion-dollar failures.
