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What is great about this story is the way that Hewlett, an engineer himself, was able to use his intuition to achieve product-market fit, you cannot imagine an

What is great about this story is the way that Hewlett, an engineer himself, was able to use his intuition to achieve product-market fit, you cannot imagine an MBA who came up through the finance department having his sort of insight, he would never had taken on that risk in 1971. There is a modern reboot of this, the HP-35s, LCD display but the same curved case.

abhinav22 6y ago
I would have to respectfully disagree. I think this can come across as stereotypical, and it may play well to an audience of engineers, scientists and programmers. Individuals themselves possess brilliance, there are good MBAs as much as there are bad MBAs and the same for STEM professionals. Rather we should say Hewlett had exceptional insight at the time, vs. attributing it to his upbringing and then making a sweeping statement on MBAs coming through a finance department.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Good MBAs tend to be good at being MBAs, which is an orthogonal skillset to being disruptive inventors. Tim Cook has an MBA. No one could complain about Apple's financial performance, but the company has definitely lost the "Let's launch a market-defining product every five years or so" momentum and gloss of the Jobs years. It's an open question whether this would actually have harmed Apple's performance over time, or whether the market cap would be even bigger if Jobs were still alive. (IMO it would probably have led to a much broader and more inventive product range which would have triggered earlier antitrust action - but of course that's just speculation and there's no possible way to back it up.)
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    The iPhone was an exceptional invention for Apple. It’s not guaranteed that Steve Jobs would have another hit. And many would say the M1 and Silicon Macs are a considerable step up, and so is the slow but steady March of wearables via Apple Watch and Air Pods. I do agree with you that there is a higher chance of innovation with Steve at the helm, but again he is a generational talent so is it fair to paint the MBA Tim Cook in a bad light when he has been reasonably successful in not just business but also innovation. My overall point is smart people are smart people and generational talents are generational talents. They can be MBAs or engineers or any other profession. Creative MBAs will be creative and dull engineer will be dull.
microtherion 6y ago
Several details of this story stuck out to me: An engineer who lives across the street from the CEO and carpools with him. Not so common anymore, though I seem to recall that Java started with an engineer who played hockey with Scott McNealy. The CEO having a consulting company do a market survey and the deciding "ah, whatever, I want one of these, let's go ahead". I think especially the latter story seems typical for Hewlett, in that he was neither a by-the-book corporate drone, nor an utterly reckless damn-the-torpedoes type, but somebody who was willing to trust his instincts and take calculated risks at times.
- acqq 6y ago
  The story continues with one later CEO who did enough low level stuff (even if together with a partner who was a genius exactly for these topics) to be able to understand the products on all levels, who as a boy cold called Bill Hewlett: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-his-way-to-an-internship-at-hewlett-packard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-h... Note: Steve Jobs, employed as a "technician fixing up and tweaking circuit board designs" even sold as his the improvement of the hardware implementation of the Pong successor bringing Wozniak to "help" him: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/127537/Steve_Jobs_Atari_Employee_Number_40.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/127537/Steve_Jobs_Atari_... Jobs started his career with working on the pure hardware. Later, he had many opportunities to learn about all hardware and software aspects of the projects he lead.
EarthIsHome 6y ago
I have the HP-35s. I really like it, but the batteries die in around 2 years even if you don't use it. Other than that, it's a really fun, tactile calculator that I find myself pulling out for simple calculations. Here's a bug list tracker: https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=735 https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.c...

abhinav22 6y ago

I would have to respectfully disagree. I think this can come across as stereotypical, and it may play well to an audience of engineers, scientists and programmers. Individuals themselves possess brilliance, there are good MBAs as much as there are bad MBAs and the same for STEM professionals. Rather we should say Hewlett had exceptional insight at the time, vs. attributing it to his upbringing and then making a sweeping statement on MBAs coming through a finance department.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Good MBAs tend to be good at being MBAs, which is an orthogonal skillset to being disruptive inventors. Tim Cook has an MBA. No one could complain about Apple's financial performance, but the company has definitely lost the "Let's launch a market-defining product every five years or so" momentum and gloss of the Jobs years. It's an open question whether this would actually have harmed Apple's performance over time, or whether the market cap would be even bigger if Jobs were still alive. (IMO it would probably have led to a much broader and more inventive product range which would have triggered earlier antitrust action - but of course that's just speculation and there's no possible way to back it up.)
- abhinav22 6y ago
  The iPhone was an exceptional invention for Apple. It’s not guaranteed that Steve Jobs would have another hit. And many would say the M1 and Silicon Macs are a considerable step up, and so is the slow but steady March of wearables via Apple Watch and Air Pods. I do agree with you that there is a higher chance of innovation with Steve at the helm, but again he is a generational talent so is it fair to paint the MBA Tim Cook in a bad light when he has been reasonably successful in not just business but also innovation. My overall point is smart people are smart people and generational talents are generational talents. They can be MBAs or engineers or any other profession. Creative MBAs will be creative and dull engineer will be dull.

microtherion 6y ago

Several details of this story stuck out to me: An engineer who lives across the street from the CEO and carpools with him. Not so common anymore, though I seem to recall that Java started with an engineer who played hockey with Scott McNealy. The CEO having a consulting company do a market survey and the deciding "ah, whatever, I want one of these, let's go ahead". I think especially the latter story seems typical for Hewlett, in that he was neither a by-the-book corporate drone, nor an utterly reckless damn-the-torpedoes type, but somebody who was willing to trust his instincts and take calculated risks at times.

acqq 6y ago
The story continues with one later CEO who did enough low level stuff (even if together with a partner who was a genius exactly for these topics) to be able to understand the products on all levels, who as a boy cold called Bill Hewlett: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-his-way-to-an-internship-at-hewlett-packard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/how-steve-jobs-cold-called-h... Note: Steve Jobs, employed as a "technician fixing up and tweaking circuit board designs" even sold as his the improvement of the hardware implementation of the Pong successor bringing Wozniak to "help" him: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/127537/Steve_Jobs_Atari_Employee_Number_40.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/127537/Steve_Jobs_Atari_... Jobs started his career with working on the pure hardware. Later, he had many opportunities to learn about all hardware and software aspects of the projects he lead.

EarthIsHome 6y ago

I have the HP-35s. I really like it, but the batteries die in around 2 years even if you don't use it. Other than that, it's a really fun, tactile calculator that I find myself pulling out for simple calculations. Here's a bug list tracker: https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=735 https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.c...