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How HP got duped into overpaying billions for Autonomy

HP once was the icon of good management. But for the past 10 years it has gone through several CEOs and the middle of a turnaround has to write off $9 billion dollars because it acquisition of Autonomy turned out to be a fiasco. HP alleges that Autonomy mis-represented its financial worth. The founder of Autonomy claims that HP destroyed Autonomy within one year.
Read the stories in

Dealbook New York Times

WSJ.com

Economist.com

But here is also a voice that articulates that if you are buying a company to secure your future, many deals will go wrong but some may go right and prevent you from becoming irrelevant.
Acquisitions is like doing R&D with a high failure rate.

Categories: Strategic Management 4 | Topics | Turnarounds | Strategy Implementation - 782 | Case Studies | HP |

Posted on Nov 21, 12

Meg Whitman is trying to turn HP around

HP has been falling behind Apple and Google and the race to be the leading Silicon Valley company. Now Meg Whitman is trying to turn this former star company around. The NYT reports.

So now Ms. Whitman is focusing her energy on H.P., the company founded by the tech legends William Hewlett and David Packard. Bill and Dave, as they are referred to at the company, spawned Silicon Valley. Last year, H.P. posted revenue of $127 billion. It employs 320,000 people directly, and easily that many again through a network of manufacturers and computer resellers across 170 countries.
TWENTYyears ago, people like Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, Larry Ellison at Oracle, and John Chambers at Cisco Systems heard Kenneth Olsen, then the leader of Digital Equipment Corporation, deride the PC as unsuited for business. Within a few years, DEC had been gobbled up by Compaq Computer. Everyone knows viscerally how fast change can overtake a legacy business — and how hard it is to change.
There’s little glory in managing decline, particularly in an industry in love with what’s next. Apple’s tablets are taking share from PC makers like H.P., but only after Apple had a near-death corporate experience that ended with the return of Steve Jobs. He created a new reality for Apple with its retail stores, something that H.P. can’t copy to sell PCs. I.B.M. also transitioned successfully after billions in losses and years of cuts. Most others ended like DEC.

Full Story

Categories: Strategic Management 4 | Topics | Turnarounds | Strategy Implementation - 782 | Case Studies | HP |

Posted on Oct 01, 12

Insider Talk about Reasons for Failure of HP Tablet running WebOS

An article in the NYTimes takes us behind the scenes of HP’s abrupt exit from the tablet market. Palm did not have the organizational capabilities to introduce a tablet into the market. The article suggests that the WebOS operating was fundamentally to flowed to compete successfully with the iPad even when the full organizational resources of HP were thrown behind it. Read article in the NYTimes.

Categories: Strategy Implementation - 782 | Case Studies | HP | Topics | Capabilities |

Posted on Jan 02, 12