business

Customers don’t want a 1/4-inch drill; they want a 1/4-inch hole. So said Ted Levitt and his article, “Marketing Myopia,” stands as a classic. In my own experience at Hewlett-Packard Medical Electronics, our engineers were positively charmed by their inventions, but what the savvier marketing folks understood was that the patient’s vital signs were not the central reason the equipment was purchased - although it was very important - but more to the point, the physicians and staff wanted a trend line....

The HP Way was not gentle. The principles that Bill Hewlett and David Packard set down to run Hewlett-Packard, HP, are not always accurately reported. For example, recently I heard a seminar where the speaker waxed on about corporate values. The speakers cited the HP Way, and nowhere is there a mention of a bottom line. I beg to differ. It’s rule number one. Packard writes, profit, [is] a measure of success, a source of strength; maximize it so long as you do so in ways consistent with the other objectives;...

The HP Way is legend. It was Hewlett-Packard’s set of guiding principles - a sort of yardstick - a road map. I had not been with the firm very long when I first heard the words HP Way. At an HP staff meeting, a manager berated one of the team. The subordinate responded without blinking, “that’s not the HP Way.” The manager changed tone immediately. At that moment the founders’ principles were in the room even though Hewlett and Packard where elsewhere....

“You can’t go home again,” wrote Thomas Wolfe. In the next several weeks I will be blogging on my memories of starting out - my first position out of college - and how I chanced to be hired by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Inc., of Wilmington Delaware. I hope this will be more than a “remember when” story. I hope to make it relevant. Why is this a remarkable story?...

Some people might say that the yellow pages are the original business data base. Researchers of business history find these time capsules buried in such places as Baker Library at the Harvard Business School. They are a fascinating snapshot of what people once bought and sold. The Yellow Pages, a history The first yellow pages were not yellow at all. They appeared in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 and contained no phone numbers....