| return to samples | Corporate Innovation H-P & Xerox - A Personal Contrast In 1876, Thomas Edison invented what was probably the most important process in corporate America, the first industrial research laboratory. Although his team abandoned it four years later, the Menlo Park "invention factory", as Henry Ford called it, would set a standard for research and development methodology that put American on the invention map and created the legendary Bell Labs and Hewlett-Packard Laboratory, among others. Bob Buderi is the author of Engines of Tomorrow, a gripping description of modern R&D labs. He recently commented on Xerox Corporation's engineering and business struggles in his EOT Research Newsletter. The company founded on the work on a lone patent clerk, Chester Carlson. Xerox the company was created by Joseph Wilson, an engineer and visionary who bet everything on an untried technology in a product that nobody wanted. It's original success is a shinning light for the American way of invention. HIGH CONTRAST I worked in Xerox's Advanced Products and Systems lab in my first job out of school. I left to go to work for HP's Microwave Division's R&D lab. In keeping with Buderi's observations, I've never gotten over how different these two companies were and probably still are. While H-P struggles in the ultra competitive computer business today, for the last forty years, it has been one of the inheritors of Edison's "invention factory" mantle. It's various labs have produced whole companies worth of innovations, in fields as different as construction, electronic measuring equipment, handheld computers and medical equipment. Xerox, in the same time period, has continued to be mostly a copier maker and to a great degree, stagnant. Why so different? As they say, God is in the details. Here are some of my personal observations of how these two companies, spending about the same amount of money, managed to have so different results: ON TIME / ON BUDGET The average R&D cycle time for a Xerox product was three to five years. The new product mortality rate prior to introduction was in excess of 75%. The average cycle time at my HP lab was one to three years. The mortality rate was under 25%. And HP upper management thought we took too long. (we were, however, an extremely profitable business unit.) Cost overruns happened in both labs but at Xerox they were huge. NEXT BENCH SYNDROME I met a marketing planner from
Xerox's HQ (downtown Rochester, NY). Once in my three year stay at the R&D
center in Penfield, NY. He was a former FBI agent. His take on what the customer
wanted was that bigger and faster copiers. In three years at the R&D center, I
never met a buying customer. SIZE MATTERS The R&D lab at HP had 100 people in it. I knew all of them on a first name basis. We all got together along the main hall at coffee breaks, at lunch and in meetings constantly. The walls in our "open office" were covered with scribbles where we sketched out product ideas during break. It was incredibly informal and human. Like a small village. At Xerox we had several thousand staff in our division. I had a private office with a door, I had a staff of three and I saw other R&D staff irregularly. To communicate, you mostly wrote memos. It was formal, too. I once moved my desk 16 inches one day to get a power cord and the union filed a grievance against me. Once, I built some of my own furniture at HP. My boss liked it and we had more built. YOUTH MATTERS The average age at Xerox (that I could see), was mid forties. When I was hired, Xerox was stock piling people but did not know what to use them for. My boss really had no assignment for me when I got there. I spent my first nine months without a job description, doing 'make work' projects. And took up smoking. At HP the average age was about 25 but there were interns everywhere, including high school kids. I started to work on my first HP assignment three days BEFORE my official start date (it's another story). Eventually I quit smoking. YOUTH MATTERS - PART 2 Stanford University's School of Engineering
offered me a position as a visiting lecturer while I was working at HP. I
accepted with my boss' approval and taught a couple classes a year, during working hours,
for the next ten years. HP continued to pay me full time and THE BEST RECRUITERS HP sent it's R&D engineers, particularly the young ones, to recruit at their own schools. The guy who hired me had me over to dinner at his house the night before the interview. His family was a kick and he remains a friend of mine to this day. When I left HP twenty years later, he was working for me. Neither of us minded either relationship. A professional HR person hired me at Xerox after having me interviewed by specialists. I met my boss the second day at work. He'd been too busy to meet me the first day, besides I had been in "orientation classes" all day. HONESTY IS POLICY A senior engineer once copied some of my notes left on my desk, submitted them to the Xerox patent department and got a patent. When confronted, he told me that he was near retirement and needed the credit. My boss (& his) told me to forget about it, "water over the dam", he said. I never forgot it. HANDS ON At the Xerox union model shop I once had a grievance filed against me when I picked up a part I had designed before the machinist officially turned over to me. At HP, a stern German machinist once called me down to the shop and made me build a part I designed. My tolerances were screwed up. Then he stayed late to teach me how to do it right and later helped me build my master's project. Years later, I ended up being his boss's boss. I never forgot his kindness and, in my own way, tried to pass it on. GOD IS IN THE LITTLE THINGS There was an "engineer's toy box" in our HP lab, stocked with parts for building your prototypes. One section of the toy box had nothing but stereo components. Most of the lab engineers were audiophiles and like to build their own gear. It had nothing to do with inventing HP products. It just kept your juices flowing. At Xerox they searched my briefcase when I left, every day. HANDS ON TALENT Thinking back, the talent Xerox has wasted over the years was a tragedy. I continue to believe that much of their problem was their traditional, tops down mentality. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, practically invented something they called "managing by walking around". Get out and see what was going on, face to face. Hewlett was always walking into a lab somewhere in HP with his patented "How's it going?". What a thrill it was to talk one-on-one with him. The only time I ever saw the CEO of Xerox was at the Chester Carlson (the inventor of xerography) funeral. I was the division's representative. I was the youngest member of the group and nobody else wanted to go. Later, one of the many new Xerox CEOs decided to move himself and his senior executives out of Rochester, NY to Darien, CT. He was quoted as saying he wanted to "decouple decision making from the Rochester influence". And decouple he did. There is no substitute for hands-on, direct involvement with the real live people in your organization.
Dan Derby |