A Lesson From Bill Hewlett - Published 2001 - Personal Blog The sad news that William R. Hewlett, founder of Hewlett-Packard Corporation, had passed away earlier this year reminded me of a lesson he once gave me. One day early in 1972 I was daydreaming in my H-P engineering lab when Bill Hewlett walked in carrying something in his open palm. Bill's infectious smile swept our area and he cheerfully challenged, "Want to see something really neat?". Our crowd of designers circled him to see the first prototype of HP's scientific calculator, the HP-35. Bill was doing his famous "managing by walking around" to get reactions to it. As he handed off to me I fumbled it, dropping the world's first scientific calculator. It was a terrible slow motion event that I've never forgotten. It seemed to take minutes to plummet downward toward the hard concrete floor. I picked it up and gave it back to Bill. He turned it on and it powered up without a hitch. Bill smiled and said "Good test, it's supposed to be rugged." I began to breath again. Most of us had heard of the project, a full bore, 7x24 effort in HP Labs to get it the world's first scientific calculator market fast. The internal attention and pressure was huge. Everybody, it seemed, was working on it. Our own lab was in a connecting building and constantly raided for parts and skills. In spite of all the interest, it almost didn't make it out the door. Only Hewlett's insight and courage of his convictions kept it from a product graveyard. Over the years the Lab's guys had proposed an electronic slide rule many times. Each time Bill said no. While simple handheld calculators were on the market, he believed underlying technologies were not ready this more advanced product. Companies regularly develop wonderful technology products that stretch the state-of-the-art. Sometimes this can spell business disaster. From the video-phones, to "smokeless" cigarettes to 8 tracks, the list is well known. In H-P's case, Hewlett refused to budge until he felt a technology ecosystem was in place. Eventually, all the parts were in place and Hewlett put the pedal to the metal. Bill gave H-P Labs carte blanche on resources but he also gave them an almost impossibly short time-to-market goal. It was Bill's belief that any number of other high tech companies could be readying their own version of this electronic slide rule. They weren't but Bill's modest belief that he couldn't be the only one to be pushing ahead was typical, too. Completeness in a product's supporting infrastructure is difficult to assess. Most companies didn't have a Bill Hewlett's keen insight. Yet breakthrough products have often been dependent on the convergence of many technologies. The jet plane and the mounted knight both required such support to succeed. The ability to economically build to dramaticly improved tolerances was essential in jets. The mounted knight was a weapons system and required, among other things, the feudal system to support it's huge new costs. Many departed dot.com companies failed to consider their technological readiness of their business environment. So in technology, as with many things in business and life, timing is everything. It's a razor's edge. If you are before your time, you are at risk. If it is time, you have very little margin to beat others to market. You have to consider both edges of this razor to succeed. Bill Hewlett knew that. The other problem with the breakthrough H-P35 was market research. The consultants H-P retained felt it's market at slightly greateer than zero. Perhaps a few esoteric engineering customers, at best. Even had the market existed, the $395 cost was ten times that of existing handheld calculators. Worse, they felt the tiny buttons needed to cram in its incredible functionality made the H-P 35 impossible to use. Calculators need rapid keying so larger buttons were the current trend. Hewlett had made it more difficult by insisting the whole product fit in his shirt pocket. The weird input system, Reverse Polish Notation, seemed like the final straw that would kill the product. Of course, these experts were the same folks that brought you the Edsel and baking soda gum. They weren't engineers. Engineers don't put in lots numbers fast, they do big, complicated calculations. They didn't care about key stroke speed and they loved all the geeky functions. The price seemed reasonable compared with, say, an oscilloscope. Reverse Polish Notation reeked of geekdom and was way more efficient. Engineers love efficiency. Hewlett was the penultimate engineer and loved the idea of the H-P35. So he went ahead on instinct but an instinct based on profound knowledge of his customer. So intimate that he knew not only what they needed but why. That knowledge was part of something called, in H-P parlance, the 'next bench syndrome'. If the guy sitting next to you needs what you are inventing, you were on the right track. It was an underlying concept in H-P product development. The H-P35, by the way, became a high status item in the engineering world and had the highest first year sales of any product in the history of company. Know they customer. Profoundly know them. In the early days, H-P was an engineering innovation master. It had, and probably still has, superb technological skills. In those days, it designed and built products that it's own engineers could and did use. With that intimate insight into their customer's needs, H-P was extraordinarily accurate in developmental decisions. As H-P became a computer company, it had less and less of that intimate user knowledge and has struggled more and more. Bill Hewlett understood his customer and his understanding permeated the companies' approach to product development. Bill didn't spend a lot of time talking or preaching it so much as he acted on his convictions. That alone spread the word. I can't count the times I set in a over heated discussion when someone would calm it down by saying, "What would Bill do?". It always got us back on track. What a wonderful legacy. Dan Derby |