Some thoughts on the firing of HP CEO Mark Hurd
You can read about Hurd’s resignation here.
This is really sad. HP has been making a lot of really interesting strategic decisions lately, some decisions that I think have been set up through acquisitions and product development over the past few years. Mark Hurd seemed to know what he was doing on a long term scale, which is something unusual in a company like HP. That he was fired over something as unrelated to business skill as sexual harassment is sad. Shame on him, of course, but I wonder if his absence will end up hurting HP more in the long term than his personal actions over the short term.
HP recently hired some top notch industrial designers, and their newest computers are built far better than the older ones. The acquisition of WebOS was strategic. HP is poised to take on Android and iOS if they can execute well enough. From what I have seen, HP has been putting all the pieces into place for positioning themselves as the Apple of the PC world, at least in their high end market. They even embarrassed Microsoft by refusing to support the Windows 7 Slate in a consumer device. That’s a big risk I was surprised HP took. It sends a message.
I was excited about HP’s future, but now I’m not so sure. HP just lost its Steve Jobs.
Last year, the New York Times ran an awesome profile of Hurd and his reinvention of HP, which you can read here
