The reason a comment like that particularly stung at HP was that for the first 50+ years HP was rather successfully run by Bill Hewlett (Masters of Electrical E

The reason a comment like that particularly stung at HP was that for the first 50+ years HP was rather successfully run by Bill Hewlett (Masters of Electrical Engineering at MIT), and Dave Packard (Masters of Electrical Engineering at Stanford). A lot of the people high up at HP while Carly was CEO remember fond lunches and dinner parties with Dave and Bill, they were quite active in the company. I agree that MBAs aren't a bad thing, and HP had many for a lot of years before Carly. But I would argue that it's exceptionally hard to change a company culture so drastically. And it can he detrimental to the organization as a whole.