One of the founders of the famous company "Hewlett-Packard", a veteran of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, a generation of industrial giants, a small company to the world's third-largest computer company, served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense of the United States, and established the famous "Hewlett-Packard Way". Deputy Secretary of Defense of the United States, set up the famous "HP Way".
Type of business Computer industry.
Growth record
In 1983, Milton, the famous New York columnist, wrote: "If you work for Hewlett-Packard, you walk around with your head held high and proud, and the mood is understandable. The California electronics company has received so many honors in recent years that it can now claim the crown of 'America's Best Company' for itself." Indeed, as of today, HP is not just the best company in America, but one of the best companies in the world. With the merger of HP and Compaq in the new century, the company that has grown up on the rocks continues to grow.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur who started with $500
Born in 1912 in Pueblo, Colorado, USA, Packard was born into a wealthy family of attorneys but grew up uninterested in the cumbersome letter of the law, and his preference was to work on his own small inventions and creations. Even an injury to his thumb for this purpose did not deter his interest.
In 1930, Packard enrolled in the electrical engineering department of the prestigious Stanford University and began his education in this famous electronics mecca. Stanford is the mother of Silicon Valley, where many intellectual heroes were born. Packard met the famous "Father of Silicon Valley," Fred Trotman, and his later best business partner, Bill Hewlett, at Stanford.
Then, the electronics industry was still a nascent industry, but after the far-sighted Terman became vice chancellor as a professor of electrical engineering, he resolved to set aside 579 acres of the university's land to create a high-tech "Stanford Research District" centered on Palo Alto in Santa Clara near San Francisco. --an industrial park with research, development, manufacturing, and sales centered on Stanford University, which became known as "Silicon Valley".
In the traditional university "ivory tower" to start a business, the first "crab" is the need for boldness. Trotman first thought of two of his students, Bill Hewlett and David Packard.
At that time, Hewlett and Packard were very good friends, and they often exchanged ideas together, often arguing about some of the issues at the forefront of academia. Terman had supervised their papers and found that they had many new ideas, which is why they were the first to think of them. Encouraged by this reformer, Hewlett and Packard drew up a plan together to start their own business after graduation. But just as they were about to start their own business, the Great Depression loomed over the entire U.S. economy, and their dream had to be put on hold for a while. After graduation, Packard was employed by General Electric while Hewlett continued his education.
But things didn't stop there, Packard's heart has always had the dream of entrepreneurship, he more than once recalled the words of Professor Terman at the graduation ceremony: "As you can see, most successful radio companies are built by people with little education. For those who have a solid theoretical foundation in this area, the chances of success are even greater, and boys, you have a great deal to offer in industry." He's been waiting for his chance.
The opportunity came quickly, as the U.S. economy recovered and many companies began purchasing electronic equipment for upgrades, there were still many gaps in the market waiting to be filled by aspiring young people. And what's more, Hewlett had already graduated, and the two good friends reunited, and after a few all-night talks, they decided to realize their dream of starting a business.
Hewlett and Packard found Professor Terman, and with his support, Hewlett and Packard began to put their entrepreneurial plans into action. The two rented an apartment at 367 Andelin St. in Palo Alto and started the first steps of their business by opening a workshop in a car garage near the apartment.
At the time, the two had only $538 in working capital and all their "fixed assets" were a workbench, a drill press, a screwdriver, a soldering iron, a hacksaw and a few purchased electronic parts. whose name would be placed in front. As luck would have it, the partnership was registered as Hewlett-Packard Company, or HP for short, from the first letter of Hewllet-Packard, but better known to the world as its acronym, HP. --HP", which has come to symbolize successful business.
Growing from failure and frustration
But things didn't always work out as planned. After the company was founded, Hewllet continued to develop a new product that was the subject of his master's thesis, and Packard took on small jobs to keep the company afloat, but it was a precarious situation, and at times they wondered how much longer they could support themselves. At this point, Prof. Terman extended his warm hands of assistance, he used his outstanding reputation in the community, and actively campaign for them. That's how Hewlett-Packard was able to continue to survive.
Finally, Hewlett produced his new invention--a kind of oscillator, applicable to a much wider range of conditions than similar products available at that time, and the price was only 1/10 of the price of similar products, Packard soon applied for a patent for this product, and the experts in the industry gave a very high appraisal of this product, and These affirmations from the authorities greatly encouraged the two of them. Packard named the product the 300A, and in order to get the product recognized by the experts, Hewlett-Packard advertised it in a major electronics business magazine, and orders started pouring in, profits increased rapidly, and the company's situation changed dramatically.
To promote the 300A, Packard attended a formal audio oscillator show in Southern California. At the show, he met a man who worked as a sound engineer at Disney Pictures, Harkins, who was preparing a sound track for a movie, "Fantasyland," and needed just the right sound effect for a special sound effect -- the sound of a bee flying off the screen, then circling the theater, then coming back on the screen. But that's where the 300A came in, and Packard was keenly aware that a partnership with Disney would not only greatly increase the company's visibility, but also bring considerable long-term benefits. He immediately introduced Hewlett-Packard's audio oscillator to Harkins, and they ended up selling eight units at once, with one reportedly still in use in Hollywood. With that, Hewlett-Packard stood on its feet in its first year of business, with $5,369 in sales and a profit of $1,563.
Hewlett-Packard founder (2)
With the first shot fired, Packard was even more energized, and by the outbreak of the war in the Pacific in 1941, Hewlett-Packard had 17 employees and was a $100,000-a-year company.
And the outbreak of the Pacific War brought a new opportunity and growth to HP. In June 1942, Hewlett was drafted into the Army, and had extensive contacts and influence in the military community, which provided a good foundation for HP's impressive post-war performance in the production of military supplies.
After Hewlett left, Packard began to take charge of the situation, he realized that HP, as a producer of electronic products, in the radio, radar, sonar, as well as marine, aviation instrumentation and other products in the demand for the surge in the situation occupies a favourable position; and the harsh conditions of the war is a good time to test the performance of these products, which is very important for the development of the company's post-war. Packard was determined to seize this historic opportunity to make Hewlett-Packard really take off. So he made meticulous improvements to many products to make them more adaptable to the needs of the war. And these products were soon being used in the military sector. By the end of World War II, Hewlett-Packard had grown into a large company with $2 million in assets and 200 employees.
When Hewlett was demobilized from the army in 1945, he found himself vice president of the large, multimillion-dollar company. At the time, Hewlett-Packard had constructed its own Redwood building, which Packard told him could be converted into a grocery store if the electronics industry faltered in the future. However, the crisis of converting into a grocery store did not come, instead, HP grew at a high rate all the way.
August 18, 1947, Hewlett-Packard Company Limited was formally established. In the face of HP's miraculous rise, Prof. Terman, who had given them much selfless help, was so happy that he said to every entrepreneur, "With HP leading the way, you will be the second and third HP." Under the call of this spirit, seven companies came to Silicon Valley to set up factories in 1955, increasing to 32 in 1960, and by 1965, when the Stanford Research Park was formally established, nearly 70 high-tech enterprises had been concentrated here, starring Stanford University; among them, Hewlett-Packard leased more than 1 million square feet of land. in the late 1970s, Hewlett and Packard also In the late 1970s, Hewlett and Packard jointly donated a modern "Terman Building" to Stanford University in honor of their mentor. The garage where they started their business was officially named the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" by the State of California in 1989, making it a treasured U.S. historical artifact.
In 1959, when Hewlett-Packard was growing under Packard's leadership, he noticed that the company's employees didn't seem to be very enthusiastic about the company, and at that time Hewlett-Packard's stock was rising, so what was it that they weren't happy about? After careful investigation, Packard understood, only let the staff hold company stock, in order to fully mobilize their enthusiasm. This is later popular in the United States of America's employee stock ownership plan, employees as the owner of the company, immediately make the company a new look. Packard once again became a national celebrity.
At this point, Hewlett-Packard entered a period of rapid expansion. In Hewlett and Packard's planning, it not only insisted on technological innovation, the development of new products, and a series of acquisitions, the company's tentacles quickly into the field of electronic equipment, from plotters, electronic medical equipment to analytical instruments, in 1989, even the early domination of workstation computers - Apollo Computer, Inc. also became HP's "in the bag"; but HP's greatest contribution in the field of personal computing tools is the first to develop a scientific calculator. Arthur C. Clarke, a famous American science fiction writer, wrote a science fiction novel entitled "Traveling in the Universe of 2001". One day, he fantasized about what kind of computing tools computer engineers would use in the future, and drew a sketch. 1968 Christmas Eve, someone told him that Hewlett-Packard was selling a HP9100A desktop calculator. Clark immediately ponied up the money to buy one, and was surprised to find that the HP9100A calculator actually looked like the sketch he had drawn.
It was this sequence of advances and innovations that kept HP ahead of the curve, and still does today.