The “HP Way” is the enlighten model of doing business on trust, excellence and friendship. Bill Hewlett was a great e

At a Goldman-Sachs Technology conference in 2002, Carly Fiorina presented how it was a rare opportunity when a technology company can advance its market position substantially and reduce its cost structure substantially at the same time. And this was possible because Compaq and HP were in the same businesses, pursing the same strategies, in the same markets, with complementary capabilities. Critics say that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. Fiorina agrees, but states this doesn’t necessarily mean the bigger can’t be better.

ngineer who built products for other engineers. This sense of excellence defined HP in its prime, extending from the company’s products to its management rank and file. As for friendship, Dave Packard trusted Bill Hewlett with his reputation, his future, and his life. Over the course of nearly 70 years, there is no record of the two of them ever fighting. Because they trusted each other completely, they could trust their employees, their customers, and even their competitors. Out of that grew a great company and an even greater business philosophy. Dave Packard and co-founder Bill Hewlett gave their company a strong corporate culture “the HP Way” based on how they had done business from the one-car garage where their company was born in 1939.

One of the key successes of this merger was that there was recognition that their were cultural differences, the differences were identified, and a process was implemented to rationalize the differences so that they would not disfunctionalize the organization. It is important to remember that the underlying issues behind this merger was that it was a merger of consolidating two great companies, not one company taking over the other.

After 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, Carly Fiorina was hired as chief executive of HP and charged to “re-invent” Hewlett-Packard. Two years after she came on board, had passed it was said that very little had changed, so what did she do two days after the stock hit a five year low? Announce that HP was acquiring Compaq for $25 billion in stock. When she announced plans to merge the company with Compaq, the market greeted the idea coolly. But this response was nothing compared to the campaign launched by Walter Hewlett, son of co-founder William Hewlett and was also a member of the board of directors, who publicly denounced the merger. If that weren’t enough, the family of co-founder Dave Packard also weighted in against the deal. The other major stakeholders of HP were the employees. It was announced that some 15,000 jobs were expected to be cut and the merged company was supposed to be eliminating 2.5 billion annually in costs. There was rumor that a lingering uncertainty was going to hurt productivity at all levels.

When Hewlett-Packard opened its doors to Carly Fiorina in 1999, the company was intensely inbred and pro

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