Hewlett Packard Archives – The Rabbit Hole

Key Takeaways

Finally, they hit upon the audio oscillator and sold eight units to Walt Disney, earning the company its first substantial revenues.
Culture and the HP Way
1. “But they had a great idea—the ultimate source of competitive advantage—if you can just see it,” I’d push back. “What might that be?” After ten or fifteen minutes, someone would likely voice the key point: Bill Hewlett and David Packard’s greatest product was not the audio oscillator, the pocket calculator, or the minicomputer. Their greatest product was the Hewlett-Packard Company and their greatest idea was The HP Way.
2. The point is not that every company should necessarily adopt the specifics of the HP Way, but that Hewlett and Packard exemplify the power of building a company based on a framework of principles. The core essence of the HP Way consists of five fundamental precepts.
  1. The Hewlett-Packard company exists to make a technical contribution, and should only pursue opportunities consistent with this purpose;
  2. The Hewlett-Packard company demands of itself and its people superior performance—profitable growth is both a means and a measure of enduring success;
  3. The Hewlett-Packard company believes the best results come when you get the right people, trust them, give them freedom to find the best path to achieve objectives, and let them share in the rewards their work makes possible;
  4. The Hewlett-Packard company has a responsibility to contribute directly to the well-being of the communities in which its operates;
  5. Integrity, period.
3. Hewlett and Packard rejected the idea that a company exists merely to maximize profits. “I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money,” Packard extolled to a group of HP managers on March 8, 1960. “While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper to find the real reasons for our being.” He then laid down the cornerstone concept of the HP Way: contribution. Do our products offer something unique—be it a technical contribution, a level of quality, a problem solved—to our customers? Are the communities in which we operate stronger and the lives of our employees better than they would be without us? Are people’s lives improved because of what we do? If the answer to any these questions is “no,” then Packard and Hewlett would deem HP a failure, no matter how much money the company returned to its shareholders.
4. Therein we find the hidden DNA of the HP Way: the genius of the And. Make a technical contribution and meet customer needs. Take care of your people and demand results. Set unwavering standards and allow immense operating flexibility. Achieve growth and achieve profitability. Limit growth to arenas of distinctive contribution and create new arenas of growth through innovation. Never compromise integrity and always win in your chosen fields. Contribute to the community and deliver exceptional shareholder returns. Behind these specifics lies the biggest “And” of all, the principle that underpins every truly great company: preserve the core and stimulate progress.
5. Any great social enterprise—whether it be a great company, a great university, a great religious institution, or a great nation—exemplifies a duality of continuity and change. On the one hand, it is guided by a set of core values and fundamental purpose that change little over time, while on the other hand, it stimulates progress—change, improvement, innovation, renewal—in all that is not part of the core guiding philosophy. In a great company, core values remain fixed while operating practices, cultural norms, strategies, tactics, processes, structures, and methods continually change in response to changing realities. Lose your core values, and you lose your soul; refuse to change your practices, and the world will pass you by.
6. Yet the ultimate test of a great company is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to recover from setbacks—even self-inflicted wounds—stronger than before.
7. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively which they could not accomplish separately. They are able to do something worthwhile—they make a contribution to society (a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental).
8. We must realize that supervision is not a job of giving orders; it is a job of providing the opportunity for people to use their capabilities efficiently and effectively.
9. If our main thought is to make money, we won’t care about these details. If we don’t care about the details, we won’t make as much money. They go hand in hand.
10. Our first obligation, which is self-evident from my previous remarks, is to let people know they are doing something worthwhile. We must provide a means of letting our employees know they have done a good job. You as supervisors must convey this to your groups. Don’t just give orders. Provide the opportunity for your people to do something important. Encourage them.
11. Profit is the measure of our contribution to our customers—it is a measure of what our customers are willing to pay us over and above the actual cost of an instrument.
12. Get the best people, stress the importance of teamwork, and get them fired up to win the game.
13. I found, after much trial and error, that applying steady gentle pressure from the rear worked best. Eventually, one would decide to pass through the gate; the rest would soon follow. Press them too hard, and they’d panic, scattering in all directions. Slack off entirely, and they’d just head back to their old grazing spots. This insight was useful throughout my management career.
14. Another example of sharing, though in a much different way, occurred in 1970. Because of a downturn in the U.S. economy, our incoming orders were running at a rate quite a bit less than our production capability. We were faced with the prospect of a 10 percent layoff. Rather than a layoff, however, we tried a different tack. We went to a schedule of working nine days out of every two weeks—a 10 percent cut in work schedule with a corresponding 10 percent cut in pay. This applied to virtually all our U.S. factories, as well as to all executives and corporate staff. At the end of a six-month period, the order rate was up again and everyone returned to a full work schedule. Some said they enjoyed the long weekends even though they had to tighten their belts a little. The net result of this program was that effectively all shared the burden of the recession, good people were not released into a very tough job market, and we had our highly qualified workforce in place when business improved.
15. GE was especially zealous about guarding its tool and parts bins to make sure employees didn’t steal anything. Faced with this obvious display of distrust, many employees set out to prove it justified, walking off with tools or parts whenever they could. Eventually, GE tools and parts were scattered all around town, including the attic of the house in which a number of us were living. In fact, we had so much equipment up there that when we threw the switch, the lights on the entire street would dim. The irony in all of this is that many of the tools and parts were being used by their GE “owners” to work on either job-related projects or skill-enhancing hobbies—activities that would likely improve their performance on the job. When HP got under way, the GE memories were still strong and I determined that our parts bins and storerooms should always be open. Keeping storerooms and parts bins open was advantageous to HP in two important ways. From a practical standpoint, the easy access to parts and tools helped product designers and others who wanted to work out new ideas at home or on weekends. A second reason, less tangible but important, is that the open bins and storerooms were a symbol of trust, a trust that is central to the way HP does business.
16. Many companies have a policy stating that once employees leave the company, they are not eligible for reemployment. Over the years we have had a number of people leave because opportunities seemed greater elsewhere. We’ve always taken the view that as long as they have not worked for a direct competitor, and if they have a good work record, they are welcomed back. They know the company, need no retraining, and usually are happier and better motivated for having had the additional experience.
17. No operating policy has contributed more to Hewlett-Packard’s success than the policy of “management by objective.” Although the term is relatively new to the lexicon of business, management by objective has been a fundamental part of HP’s operating philosophy since the very early days of the company. MBO, as it is frequently called, is the antithesis of management by control. The latter refers to a tightly controlled system of management of the military type, where people are assigned—and expected to do—specific jobs, precisely as they are told and without the need to know much about the overall objectives of the organization. Management by objective, on the other hand, refers to a system in which overall objectives are clearly stated and agreed upon, and which gives people the flexibility to work toward those goals in ways they determine best for their own areas of responsibility. It is the philosophy of decentralization in management and the very essence of free enterprise.
18. I don’t argue that the job can’t be done that way, but I do argue strongly that the best job can be done when the manager has a genuine and thorough understanding of the work. I don’t see how managers can even understand what standards to observe, what performance to require, and how to measure results unless they understand in some detail the specific nature of the work they are trying to supervise.
19. I learned everything I could about the causes of failure and decided to spend most of my time on the factory floor, making sure every step in the manufacturing process was done correctly. I found several instances where the written instructions provided the manufacturing people were inadequate, and I worked with them on each step in the process to make sure there were no mistakes. This painstaking attention to detail paid off, and every tube in the next batch passed its final test.
20. That was the genesis of what has been called MBWA. I learned that quality requires minute attention to every detail, that everyone in an organization wants to do a good job, that written instructions are seldom adequate, and that personal involvement is essential.
21. It needs to be frequent, friendly, unfocused, and unscheduled—but far from pointless. And since its principal aim is to seek out people’s thoughts and opinions, it requires good listening.
22. Linked with MBWA is another important management practice at Hewlett-Packard, and a basic tenet of the HP Way. It’s called the “open door policy.” Like MBWA, this policy is aimed at building mutual trust and understanding, and creating an environment in which people feel free to express their ideas, opinions, problems, and concerns.
23. The open door policy is very important at HP because it characterizes the management style to which we are dedicated. It means managers are available, open, and receptive. Everyone at HP, including the CEO, works in open-plan, doorless offices. This ready availability has its drawbacks in that interruptions are always possible. But at HP we’ve found that the benefits of accessibility far outweigh the disadvantages. The open door policy is an integral part of the management-by-objective philosophy. Also, it is a procedure that encourages and, in fact, ensures that the communication flow be upward as well as downward.
Business
1. Bill’s audio oscillator represented the first practical, low-cost method of generating high-quality audio frequencies needed in communications, geophysics, medicine, and defense work. The audio oscillator was to become the Hewlett-Packard Company’s first product.
2. We designated this first product the Model 200A because we thought the name would make us look like we’d been around for a while. We were afraid that if people knew we’d never actually developed, designed, and built a finished product, they’d be scared off. Our pricing was even more naive: We set it at $54.40 not because of any cost calculations but because, of all things, it reminded us of “54°4o' or Fight!” (the 1844 slogan used in the campaign to establish the northern border of the United States in the Pacific Northwest). We soon discovered we couldn’t afford to build the machines for that price. Luckily, our nearest competition was a $400 oscillator from General Radio, which gave us considerable room to maneuver.
3. At the end of 1939, our first full year in business, our sales totaled $5,369 and we had made $1,563 in profits. We would show a profit every year thereafter.
4. In those early days Bill and I had to be versatile. We had to tackle almost everything ourselves—from inventing and building products to pricing, packaging, and shipping them; from dealing with customers and sales representatives to keeping the books; from writing the ads to sweeping up at the end of the day. Many of the things I learned in this process were invaluable, and not available in business schools.
5. He said that more businesses die from indigestion than starvation. I have observed the truth of that advice many times since then.
6. Although the pressure to meet production deadlines was enormous, there was also lots of excitement and a great sense of camaraderie.
7. Eventually, because of big gains in productivity, the bonus to our entire workforce rose to as much as 85 percent of base wages. At that point, which was some time after the war, we abandoned this particular bonus plan. But in no way did we discontinue the practice of sharing profits among all our people. To this day, Hewlett-Packard has a profit-sharing program that encourages teamwork and maintains that important link between employee effort and corporate success.
8. Bill and I had decided we were going to reinvest our profits and not resort to long-term borrowing. I felt very strongly about this issue, and we found we were clearly able to finance 100 percent growth per year by reinvesting our profits. After some discussion with the members of the board, they seemed to be impressed with what we were doing but said they had a limit of 12 percent of profit they could allow on equity. I pointed out that our business had been doubling every year and that it would continue to do so for several years. I also told them that I had kept my salary at a lower level than it should have been because I did not think it was fair for my salary to be higher than Bill’s army salary.
9. We developed additional instruments, and later on, again working with Dr. Haeff, we built a device his group developed that was capable of jamming an enemy’s ship-board radar. It was at the core of what was code-named the Leopard project. We were very conscientious about meeting our delivery schedule on this project, working around the clock. I recall moving a cot into the factory and sleeping there many nights.
10. I believe this decision to focus our efforts was extremely important, not only in the early days of the company but later on as well. During the war, for example, we could have taken on some big—at least for us—production contracts. But that would have built the company to a level that probably couldn’t be sustained later on. I felt that we should take on no more than we could reasonably handle, building a solid base by doing what we did best—designing and manufacturing high-quality instruments.
11. The counter was so useful when it did work that our customers tolerated its unreliability.
12. Our collaboration with Stanford and Fred Terman continued, and in 1954 we expanded on the fellowship program and established what became known as the Honors Cooperative Program, which allowed qualified HP engineers to pursue advanced degrees at Stanford. The program made it possible for us to hire top-level young graduates from around the country with the promise that if they came to work for us and we thought it appropriate, they could attend graduate school while on full HP salary. Originally, the company paid part of their tuition as well, and more recently has paid all of their tuition. More than four hundred HP engineers have obtained master’s or doctorate degrees through this program. It has enabled us to hire the top engineering graduates from universities all across the country for a number of years—an important factor in the ultimate success of our company.
13. As I have said many times, our success depends in large part on giving the responsibility to the level where it can be exercised effectively, usually on the lowest possible level of the organization, the level nearest the customer.
14. There were about 4,000 people at this facility, and we were the first Americans ever to visit. It was obvious to me that what they were building would be entirely useless in modern-day combat, but I didn’t say anything at the time, except to compliment them on their workmanship.
15. Bill Hewlett and I were raised during that depression. We had observed its devastating effects on people, including many families and friends who were close to us. My father had been appointed as a bankruptcy referee for the state of Colorado. When I returned to Pueblo during the summers of the 1930s, I often helped my father in looking up the records of those companies that had gone bankrupt. I noted that the banks simply foreclosed on firms that mortgaged their assets and these firms were left with nothing. Those firms that did not borrow money had a difficult time, but they ended up with their assets intact and survived during the depression years that followed. From this experience I decided our company should not incur any long-term debt. For this reason Bill and I determined we would operate the company on a pay-as-you-go basis, financing our growth primarily out of earnings rather than by borrowing money.
16. Our long-standing policy has been to reinvest most of our profits and to depend on this reinvestment, plus funds from employee stock purchases and other cash flow items, to finance our growth. The stock purchase plan allows employees to apply up to a certain percentage of their salaries to purchase shares of HP stock at a preferential price. The company picks up a portion of the price of the stock. The plan has been in existence since 1959 and has provided us with significant amounts of cash to help finance our growth.
17. I was convinced we could correct the problem through greater self-discipline. I quickly visited nearly every one of our major divisions, meeting with a host of managers and giving them a lecture that was later characterized by one manager as “Dave’s give-’em-hell talk.”
18. One of our most important management tasks is maintaining the proper balance between short-term profit performance and investment for future strength and growth.
19. The pricing of new products is an important and challenging exercise. Often a product will be introduced to the market at a price too low to make an adequate short-term profit. The thinking is that “we’ll get our costs down and that will enable us to make a good profit”— either next month, next quarter, or next year. But that time seldom, if ever, comes. Often pricing also falls prey to the goal of “market share.” Many managers in American industry are caught up with the idea of capturing a larger share of a market, often by undercutting the competition’s prices. In the short term, that often results in an impressive sales volume . . . but at the expense of little or no profit.
20. What we did decide, however, was that we wanted to direct our efforts toward making important technical contributions to the advancement of science, industry, and human welfare. It was a lofty, ambitious goal. But right from the beginning, Bill and I knew we didn’t want to be a “me-too” company merely copying products already on the market.
21. A constant flow of good new products is the lifeblood of Hewlett-Packard and essential to our growth. Early on we developed a system for measuring the flow and success of new products.
22. At HP, as in other technical companies, there is no shortage of ideas. The problem is to select those likely to fill a real need in the marketplace. To warrant serious pursuit an idea must be both practical (the device under consideration must work properly) and useful. Out of those ideas that are practical, a smaller number are useful. To be useful an invention must not only fill a need, it must be an economical and efficient solution to that need. we often used to select projects on the basis of a six-to-one engineering return. That is, the profit we expected to derive over the lifetime of a product should be at least six times greater than the cost of developing the product. Almost without exception, the products that beat the six-to-one ratio by the widest margin were the most innovative.
23. How do managers provide encouragement and help the inventor retain enthusiasm in the face of such disappointment? HP shows off its first computer in 1967 at the IEEE trade show in New York City. Many HP managers over the years have expressed admiration for the way Bill Hewlett handled these situations. One manager has called it Bill’s “hat-wearing process.” Upon first being approached by a creative inventor with unbridled enthusiasm for a new idea, Bill immediately put on a hat called “enthusiasm.” He would listen, express excitement where appropriate and appreciation in general, while asking a few rather gentle and not too pointed questions. A few days later, he would get back to the inventor wearing a hat called “inquisition.” This was the time for very pointed questions, a thorough probing of the idea, lots of give-and-take. Without a final decision, the session was adjourned. Shortly thereafter, Bill would put on his “decision” hat and meet once again with the inventor. With appropriate logic and sensitivity, judgment was rendered and a decision made about the idea. This process provided the inventor with a sense of satisfaction, even when the decision went against the project—a vitally important outcome for engendering continued enthusiasm and creativity.
24. In 1994, HP’s sales in computer products, service, and support were almost $20 billion, or about 78 percent of the company’s total business. In 1964, our sales totaled $125 million and were entirely in instruments. Not a penny was from computer sales. This represents a remarkable transformation of our company and its business. It would be nice to claim that we foresaw the profound effect of computers on our business and that we prepared ourselves to take early advantage of the computer age. Unfortunately, the record does not justify such pride. It would be more accurate to say that we were pushed into computers by the revolution that was changing electronics.
25. Several years later, at a gathering of HP engineers, I presented Chuck with a medal for “extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering duty.” So how does a company distinguish between insubordination and entrepreneurship? To this young engineer’s mind the difference lay in the intent. “I wasn’t trying to be defiant or obstreperous. I really just wanted a success for HP,” Chuck said. “It never occurred to me that it might cost me my job.” As a postscript to the story, this same engineer later became director of a department . . . with his reputation as a maverick intact.
26. The fundamental basis for success in the operation of Hewlett-Packard is the job we do in satisfying the needs of our customers. We encourage every person in our organization to think continually about how his or her activities relate to the central purpose of serving our customers.
27. Noel, a key member of our top-management team, was a strong advocate for helping the customer, so much so that he wanted our sales engineers to take the customer’s side in any disputes with the company. “We don’t want you blindly agreeing with us,” he’d tell them. “We want you to stick up for the customer. After all, we’re not selling hardware; we’re selling solutions to customer problems.” Noel stressed the importance of customer feedback in helping us design and develop products aimed at real customer needs. He also insisted that our salespeople never speak disparagingly of the competition. This reflected our feeling that competitors should be respected, the type of respect that existed between General Radio and HP when Bill and I were starting out.
28. “More for less” became the goal for each new LaserJet model. This objective reveals a lesson learned from our experience with calculators. For many years we continued to introduce increasingly sophisticated calculators with greater capabilities at greater cost to consumers. Meanwhile, our competitors were offering basic features at a lower price. For the mass market, basic features were sufficient, and the lower-priced models decreased HP’s calculator market share. The sophisticated HP calculators sold to customers who needed more advanced capabilities—but we lost a large portion of the marketplace. With LaserJet printers, we decided that each revision would offer our customers greater capability at a lower price than its predecessor.
29. Kenzo Sasaoka, our manager in Japan, and he said that I had shown him the way—that gains in quality come from meticulous attention to detail and every step in the manufacturing process must be done as carefully as possible, not as quickly as possible. This sounds simple, but it is achieved only if everyone in the organization is dedicated to quality.
30. Especially in a technical business where the rate of progress is rapid, a continuing program of education must be undertaken and maintained.
31. Another requirement is that a high degree of enthusiasm should be encouraged at all levels; in particular, the people in high management positions must not only be enthusiastic themselves, they must be able to engender enthusiasm among their associates. There can be no place for halfhearted interest or halfhearted effort.
32. Thus, we made an early and important decision: We did not want to be a “hire and fire”—a company that would seek large, short-term contracts, employ a great many people for the duration of the contract, and at its completion let those people go. This type of operation is often the quickest and most efficient way to get a big job accomplished. But Bill and I didn’t want to operate that way. We wanted to be in business for the long haul, to have a company built around a stable and dedicated workforce.
33. Growth also affected the size and nature of company picnics. Bill and I considered picnics an important part of the HP Way, and in the early days we had an annual picnic in the Palo Alto area for all our people and their families. It was a big event, one largely planned and carried out by our employees themselves. The menu consisted of New York steaks, hamburgers, Mexican beans or frijoles, green salad, garlic French bread, and beer. The company bought the food and beer. It became customary for the machine shop people to barbeque the steaks and burgers, with other departments responsible for other parts of the menu. Bill and I and other senior executives served the food, giving us the opportunity to meet all of the employees and their families. In the early 1950s the company bought a parcel of land, called Little Basin, in the redwood country about an hour’s drive from Palo Alto. We converted part of it into a recreation area, large enough to have a picnic with two thousand people or more. We also made it available year around for our employees and their families to go overnight camping. This was such a popular benefit that we decided, later on, to duplicate the idea in other parts of the world where we had concentrations of HP people.
34. The underlying principle of HP’s personnel policies became the concept of sharing—sharing the responsibilities for defining and meeting goals, sharing in company ownership through stock purchase plans, sharing in profits, sharing the opportunities for personal and professional development, and even sharing the burdens created by occasional downturns in business.
35. In the United States and many other countries, employees participate in stock purchase plans and in cash profit sharing. U.S. employees with more than six months of service are eligible for profit sharing, and each year receive amounts calculated on the company’s pretax earnings. Over the years this payout has been as high as 9.9 percent and as low as 4.1 percent of base salary. Since the company has always been profitable, the program has continued uninterrupted since we started it in the 1950s.
36. An important responsibility of managers is the selection and training of their potential successors. Management succession is especially critical at the upper levels of an organization, where a manager may be responsible for a wide scope of complex activities involving the expenditure of many millions of dollars and the efforts of many thousands of people.
37. I have always felt that the most successful companies have a practice of promoting from within.
38. Today Hewlett-Packard operates in many different communities throughout the world. We stress to our people that each of these communities must be better for our presence. This means being sensitive to the needs and interests of the community; it means applying the highest standards of honesty and integrity to all our relationships with individuals and groups; it means enhancing and protecting the physical environment and building attractive plants and offices of which the community can be proud; it means contributing talent, energy, time, and financial support to community projects.
39. It took forty years for the company Bill Hewlett and I started in 1939 to reach one billion dollars in annual sales and a major part of that was from inflation. In the 1994 fiscal year that ended last October, we began the year with twenty billion dollars in worldwide sales and added five billion to that by year’s end. This occurred with essentially no inflation. Other technology companies have shown similar growth. Just as it has in the past, our growth in the future will come from new products. In 1994, we spent two billion dollars in new product development. Beginning in 1939 we generated at least six dollars of profit, spread over five or six years, for every dollar spent on new product development. By new products, I mean products that make real contributions to technology, not products that copy what someone else has done. This must be our standard in the future just as it has been in the past.
Other
1. I had to work very hard at Latin, but the math and science courses were easy because I already knew about as much as the teachers did. I was elected president of my class all four years.
1. Bill went to a private elementary school, going to and from on a cable car. He did well with numbers and arithmetic but had great difficulty reading. He was thought to be a slow learner when, in actuality, he was dyslexic. But in those days no one knew what dyslexia was. He continued to have trouble reading and writing, and later on, in lecture classes, he couldn’t write notes fast enough to keep up with the lecturer. So, as is the case with many dyslexics, he learned how to listen, to file thoughts and information in a logical form and have them readily available from memory. “This procedure worked particularly well in learning math and science,” he says.
2. I learned everything I could about possible causes of failure, and I decided to spend most of my time on the factory floor to make sure every step was done properly. It soon became apparent that the instructions the engineering department gave the factory people were not adequate to ensure that every step would be done properly. I found the factory people eager to do the job right. We worked together to conduct tests and identify every possible cause of failure, and as a result, every tube in that batch of twenty passed its final test without a single failure. That was a very important lesson for me—that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions. That was the genesis of what became “management by walking around” at the Hewlett-Packard Company.
3. These miscellaneous jobs made us more sure of ourselves and our skills. They also revealed something we hadn’t planned but that was of great benefit to our partnership—namely, that our abilities tended to be complementary. Bill was better trained in circuit technology, and I was better trained and more experienced in manufacturing processes. This combination of abilities was particularly useful in designing and manufacturing electronic products.
4. Another benefit from ranching was my friendship with Bill Hewlett. By running the ranches together—as well as the company—Bill and I developed a unique understanding of each other. This harmony has served us well every single day in running HP.
5. Shortly after my arrival at the Pentagon, I called on all four of the Joint Chiefs in their offices and told them I wanted to work with them and that I needed their help. Bill and I had a deer hunt every year at our San Felipe ranch southeast of San Jose. He and I brought all the food, and we cooked and served the meals and washed the dishes ourselves with the help of our guests. In the spirit of friendship and collaboration, I invited the Joint Chiefs to join us at the deer hunt in 1969. They came and each got a deer. When it was time to wash the dishes, they rolled up their sleeves and helped us. That hunt helped establish a good rapport with the Joint Chiefs.
6. Before I went to Washington, even the people who encouraged me to go warned me that a career in business would ill prepare me for the frustrations of government bureaucracy. And they were right.
7. When i think of the phenomenal growth of the electronics industry over the last fifty years, I realize how fortunate Bill Hewlett and I were to be in on the ground floor. But it reminds me of a story I like to tell on myself. In my sophomore year at Stanford I took a course in American history and had the opportunity to study the westward movement beginning with the early pioneers and continuing throughout the nineteenth century. I remember lamenting that I had been born one hundred years too late, that all the frontiers had been conquered, and that my generation would be deprived of the pioneering opportunities offered our forebears. But in fact, we went on to make breathtaking advances in the twentieth century.

What I got out of it

Some incredible business lessons from one of the original silicon valley companies that started it all