On
his early propensity for tinkering
"I'd always been interested in scientific things, but my
father — who died when I was 12 — was a greatly
beloved doctor, and I did not want to compete with his image,
so instead of getting interested in medicine I invested a
lot of hours disassembling door locks and things like that.
My mother just called it mischief."
On HP's early days
"When I talk to business schools occasionally, the professor
of management is devastated when I say we didn't have any
plans when we started. The idea of having a business came
before our invention of the audio oscillator. We were just
opportunistic. We did anything to bring in a nickel. We made
a bowling alley foul-line indicator, a clock drive for a telescope,
a thing to make a urinal flush automatically, and a shock
machine to make people lose weight. Here we were, with about
$500 in capital, trying whatever someone thought we might
be able to do. So we got into this thing not by design but
because it worked out that way."
HP's first product,
Bill's audio oscillator
In the spring of 1938, working in Professor Fred Terman's
lab at Stanford, engineering students, including Bill Hewlett,
developed some laboratory equipment applications for negative
feedback. Bill's important contribution was the resistance-stabilized
audio oscillator.
Bill's audio oscillator represented the first practical,
low-cost method of generating high-quality audio frequencies
needed in communications, geophysics, medicine and defense
work.
They named it the 200A because they thought the name would
make HP look like it had been around for a while.
Bill remembered, "We really didn't know if this oscillator
was any good. We simply put one together that worked pretty
well, sent a letter out to universities and others, got three
or four orders, and tried it again."
On keeping storerooms
open
When HP got under way, Bill and Dave determined that parts
bins and storerooms should always be open. Sometimes not everyone
got the word, however, which accounted for an incident that
occurred some years later. Coming into the plant one weekend
to do some work, Bill Hewlett stopped off at a company storeroom
to pick up a microscope. Finding the equipment cage locked,
he broke open the latch and left a note saying that the room
never ever was to be locked again.
On valuing creativity
In the 1950s Bill and Dave wanted HP engineers to think
creatively. Realizing schedules were filled with lab assignments,
Hewlett wanted to make it illegal to do scheduled work on
Fridays. He suggested engineers take the day off to "think
blue sky."
It never quite turned out that way, but Fridays were the
day for brainstorming about the future and for "thinking far
out."
Engineers from that time recall that Bill and Dave were
very forgiving about mistakes because they believed that if
you weren't thinking far enough ahead you wouldn't make mistakes,
and they wanted to encourage creative and experimental thinking.
On Bill's generosity
When he was in eighth grade, Steve Jobs decided to build
a frequency counter for a school project and needed parts.
Someone suggested that he call Bill Hewlett. Finding a William
Hewlett in the telephone book, the 12-year-old Jobs called
and asked, "Is this the Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard?"
"Yes," said Bill. Jobs made his request. Bill spent some time
talking to him about his project. Several days later, Jobs
went to HP and picked up a bag full of parts that Bill had
put together for him.
Subsequently, Jobs landed a summer job at HP. He later went
on to co-found Apple Computer.
On the secret of HP's
success
The secret revolved simply on "choosing the right things
to do."
"We knew what technology was available," Bill said, "and
we figured out how little bits of it would fit within the
area where we wanted to be. There was not one giant step that
we took at any point; there were a lot of little steps. Pretty
much we just stuck to our knitting. I think we were concerned
about making a technical contribution and we operated on the
assumption that if we made a contribution to society, rewards
would follow."
On survival of the
HP Way
"What we consider the HP Way doesn't just happen from the
top; it's built into the organization. I tell HP people, 'You're
really the propagators of the HP Way. You're where it resides.'"
Shared values
When asked about his relationship with Dave, Bill told a
story about their common values. Once, upon hearing about
a local disaster at a place where they owned a ranch together,
Bill telephoned the ranch foreman and said that if there was
a need for financial assistance in the community he would
like to make an anonymous donation but, he underscored, the
gift would have to be anonymous. The foreman replied, "Gee,
that's funny, Mr. Hewlett, Mr. Packard telephoned about a
half hour ago with the exact same request."
Common interest in the
outdoors
Bill and Dave's common interest in the outdoors first manifested
itself in their junior year at Stanford when one of their
professors organized a field trip to the Sierra Nevada to
visit a hydroelectric power plant operated by Southern California
Edison. Bill and Dave took that occasion to go fishing and
had a wonderful time together. That was the first of many
trips to the mountains, including a two-week pack trip in
Colorado shortly after they graduated in 1934. On that occasion
they, plus a horse rented for a dollar a day, hiked up into
the San Juan Mountains.
There is no question that a shared love of the outdoors
strengthened their friendship and helped build a mutual understanding
and respect that was at the core of their successful business
relationship.
Designing a plant that
could be used as a supermarket
After World War II, HP's earnings and employment figures
dipped slightly, but by 1950, HP's employment was back up
to its wartime peak of about 200. The company had built its
first building and expanded into a nearby Quonset hut. Needing
still more room for manufacturing, they built a plant adjacent
to the existing building. They designed it to be a general-purpose
building, thinking that if they couldn't keep the company
going, they could lease out the new plant as a supermarket.
On their early management
philosophy
Bill Hewlett put it this way: "It is important to remember
that both Dave and I were products of the Great Depression.
We had observed its effects on all sides, and it could not
help but influence our decisions on how a company should be
run."
Two thoughts were clear to them from the start. "First,
we did not want to run a hire-and-fire operation, but rather
a company built on a loyal and dedicated work force. Further,
we felt that this work force should be able to share to some
extent in the progress of the company. Second, we wished to
operate, as much as possible, on a pay-as-you-go basis, that
our growth be financed by our earnings and not by debt."
