Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company [Hardcover]

The best book, by far, about the founders of the Hewlett-Packard company. Malone, with an insider's emotional connection and a polished journalistic style, has produced a warm, empathetic portrait of two remarkable men that will likely never be equaled. Malone embeds their story remarkably well in the context of the times, over a fifty-five year business span of twentieth-century America. Working with hitherto unavailable resources, both from the families and the Hewlett-Packard archives, this book dissects the character of the two men (all the harder for the very private, very shy dyslexic Hewlett) and establishes their worth and contribution in a way that, I suspect, many HP alumni will find incredibly accurate and compelling.

This is not a hagiography - in places, Malone observes that they did some things on occasion that they later would not tolerate in their employees, avowedly exhibiting a fake product at a trade show, for example. He chronicles some near-misses - learning the lessons of cash flow or ethical behavior or pricing strategies the hard way. And he puts their life evolution into context as well, noting that they did far more than "simply" build a great company - they became business statesmen, national statesmen, and valuable world scene philanthropy, learning all the while throughout long and productive lifetimes.

Importantly, Malone interprets Packard's own autobiography for the serious student of HP. Packard wrote a laconic austere account near the end of his life - Malone analyzes many passages and gives them far more liveliness than did Dave himself. Purists might quibble about a number of factual dates and places, but this is not intended as a definitive history - it is instead a monumental offering about a philosophy of business for which the details are better left somewhat sketchy in order to appreciate the tapestry that was composed.

At a time that HP has just become the largest (in revenue) high-tech player in the world, and it has been besmirched by a wayward CEO and a sad Board debacle over pretexting, this book will help restore the HP pride factor. It certainly has done so for me.

Maybe most importantly, Malone re-sets the bar for corporation leadership today to consider longer term perspective - including the distinct possibility that the bedrock tenets of this duo, with their belief in the worth, dignity, and innate creativity of individuals, are more apropos for the 21st century with its offshored, outsourced virtual teams than ever before.

I am an HP retiree so I have a particular bias here... I am also a great admirer of Mike Malone's writing and television work. You are free to take everything I say with a grain of salt...

I liked this book very much. It puts more meat on the bones of Packard's book "The HP Way". It rambles in places (HP "rambled" in places and at times... ex-HPers will understand that) but it's all in all very interesting. The book focuses on Bill and Dave -- the people and their years of building/managing HP from the days at Stanford to their deaths in the 1990's. Above all, Malone never forgets that the story of Bill & Dave and HP is the story of HP people -- as Malone as described in other places, "a company of den mothers and little league coaches."

If you are looking for a history of HP's memorable products and technical discussions about them, this is not the book for you. There are some stories about products but they are woven into the context of the bigger picture of HP at the time of the product's introduction or to illustrate the contribution to society the product made (e.g., the HP-35 calculator).

I especially enjoyed the beginning sections about Bill & Dave's childhoods and the early years at Stanford. I didn't know Bill was dyslexic and that was the source of both his genius and his shyness. I wish Malone had provided some more information about Lucille Packard and Flora Hewlett (both of whom were very important to HP -- especially during the early years) and their family lives.

Malone leaves out some things though... John Minck (who's quoted several times in the book) once sent me a version of the HP Corporate Objectives dated prior to 1966. That version that has "Contribution" as #1 and "Profit" as #2. He told me that Dave put the squash on this right away and elevated "Profit" to #1 resulting in the version we know and love today. One more proof of the point that Bill & Dave were businessmen not fishers of men. Enlightened though they were; they were tough and I personally witnessed one instance of Dave firing someone on the spot.

Malone also doesn't mention Dave's "Eleven Simple Rules" anywhere in the book. To me, the three documents that define the HP Way are "The HP Way" (it begins "We have trust and respect for individuals" ... not Dave's book with the same title), the HP Corporate Objectives (1966 - 1990) and Dave's "Eleven Simple Rules". I sent an email about this to Malone and he has promised to rectify this oversight by writing an article about them for either the Wall Street Journal or his regular ABC News column.

"Bill and Dave" is a fine book and you will learn much from it. The book describes the HP Way as an imprecise roadmap but also places it in a context with the life and times of it's two progenitors. Malone doesn't make the HP Way any more precise but he certainly makes it much better

understood. I'm glad he took the time to write "Bill and Dave" -- it's a story that needs telling and is worth preserving.

This is a fascinating account of what is (or at least was) one of the most admired and respected companies, not just for its product reputation, but for its corporate culture and management style that was unique in its day, and copied by many others since.

The book chronicles how Hewlett and Packard started a bare-bones company in a one-car garage with a single product and grew it into a multi-billion dollar global corporation. Malone looks at their childhood years and how their unique life experiences shaped their personal characters and values, as well as the culture of the company that bears their name. It was most interesting to see how these men, friends from their Stanford years, but with very different, though complementary, personal styles, learned to work together in an attitude of complete trust, and to instill in their company a set of values known popularly as the HP Way. Malone, thankfully, does not view Bill and Dave through rose-colored glasses, but is realistic about their personal foibles as well. Numerous examples are provided to show how they learned from their mistakes and went on to re-invent themselves several times over in response to issues of growth, to changing product needs and to the business climate - all while keeping the core set of guiding values in tact. And it was encouraging to be reminded, that despite the enormous fame and wealth that came to them, they never forgot their beginnings, but became almost as well-known for their philanthropic efforts.

Although the majority of the book is devoted to the glory days of Hewlett and Packard, Malone also discusses HP under the subsequent leadership of John Young, Lew Platt, the recent disastrous six years under Carly Fiorina in which the HP culture was almost destroyed, and attempts to "fix" things under its current president, Mark Hurd.

This book was of particular interest to me, an HP employee from 1980 - 2000 in both its instrument and printer businesses, and provided a trip down nostalgia lane since I knew many of the players from the earlier days. Though not without its frustrations, HP was a great experience for me, especially in marked contrast to my earlier career in the aerospace industry.

If I could wish for something more, it would be to include a little more about Agilent, the 1999 spin-off instrument business which was, after all, HP's core business during the first few decades. But overall, the book is eminently readable and highly recommended to anyone interested in business, technology or ethics.