The ‘what should be done about Hewlett-Packard’ game has been going off and on for some time.
The latest players enter after consideration of the latest quarterly financial results. They include industry analyst Rob Enderle, the head of a company that find candidates for boards of directors and an academic/writer on innovation. So as the week begins we start with a look at what they have to say.
(Enderle argues HP’s printer business is in decline. Above, the Color LaserJet CP5525)
This advice game dates back to the tenure of CEOs, Lew Pratt, criticized for not being aggressive enough in the late 1990s; Carly Fiorina, criticized for the acquisition of Compaq and the failed acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mark Hurd, criticized for being a ruthless cost cutter who found $1.2 billion to buy Palm; and Leo Apotheker, criticized for presiding over a falling stock, for spending $10 billion to buy Autonomy and proposing to spin off the personal computing division.
Current CEO Meg Whitman is presiding over another corporate restructuring.
Is she up to the task, and, if so, does she want some free advice?
Mark Rogers, CEO of Board Prospects.com, argues Whiteman isn’t the right leader for the time. Haydn Shaughnessy offers seven lessons HP can learn from its peers, while Rob Enderle has winnowed it down to three steps HP can take to turn itself around.
Who cares? A lot of people do: HP employees, including those in Canada; its partner resllers and system integrators; and businesses and government departments who have invested a lot of money in its hardware and software.
Meanwhile, over the next few days staff reporter Brian Bloom will be reporting on HP’s new products and strategy announcements from the company’s Discover 2012 conference in Frankfurt, Germany.
RELEATED CONTENT:
Is HP a train wreck or stabilizing?
Is HP a train wreck or stabilizing?