HP´s deal to acquire EDS just closed. Around 500 people were part of the integration team to make this $14 billion merger work and help turn a traditional hardware/software IT giant into a global consultancy across the entire value chain. The theme music for HP: First we take Dell, then IBM. Three years after Mark Hurd took over the helm at HP, the latest move is either a risky bet or a sure sign that HP has resurfaced and re-invented itself.
I last visited the legendary tech firm shortly after Hurd had come in and was impressed by the will to cut costs and streamline things (you can read the feature in brand eins). So two years later, I went back and spent some time with researchers and managers who told me what the company is doing to become more hip in consumer electronics innovation, design and marketing, taking a page or two from Apple´s book.
The new spirit is spreading, by design. Innovation guru Phil McKinney set up a first small innovation office that is now being replicated across the entire organization to create dozens of internal start-ups faster. Then there´s the large, green cloud-computing initiative to design and build data centers that run almost by themselves, provisioned and managed from half-way around the world.
The fruits of this reporting are in the new issue of brand eins, and if you can´t get your hands on a copy, here is a sampling of video interviews shot at HP.
