http://www.cultofmac.com/
I recently re-read Bill Hewlett's book the "HP Way" and we wrote a group paper on the company for my Organization Behavior class. The whole HP story is quite fascinating and his book is very insightful, nearly 20 years after it was published. The book is definitely worth the time. David Packard and Bill Hewitt were certainly ahead of their time in so many ways, it is quite amazing. Of course, their start up garage was real and is now a historic landmark for the creation of "Silicon Valley" They downplayed the whole garage myth and said it was just a place to work and was very temporary. It is amazing how many companies were eventually started by former HP employees. This was the first time I read that most of Apple's early work was done at HP and not in the fabled garage.
Don't know if I really have a point here other that it is a little ironic that Apple was started at HP while Steve jobs was on their payroll, which was really the original silicon valley start-up and now Apple is even larger and more successful than HP. The other open questions is, why didn't HP recognize and foster the creative talent they had on staff and for which the were paying. Bill Hewlett's first job was with GE where he got much of his practical knowledge from before heading out to form HP. So maybe GE really deserves some of the credit for both of these companies and all of Silicon Valley?
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