The counter was so useful when it did work that our customers tolerated its unreliability.

I have always felt that the most successful companies have a practice of promoting from within.

At the end of 1939, our first full year in business, our sales totaled $5,369 and we had made $1,563 in profits. We would show a profit every year thereafter.

Bill Hewlett and I were raised during that depression. We had observed its devastating effects on people, including many families and friends who were close to us. My father had been appointed as a bankruptcy referee for the state of Colorado. When I returned to Pueblo during the summers of the 1930s, I often helped my father in looking up the reco

We developed additional instruments, and later on, again working with Dr. Haeff, we built a device his group developed that was capable of jamming an enemy’s ship-board radar. It was at the core of what was code-named the Leopard project. We were very conscientious about meeting our delivery schedule on this project, working around the clock. I rec

Linked with MBWA is another important management practice at Hewlett-Packard, and a basic tenet of the HP Way. It’s called the “open door policy.” Like MBWA, this policy is aimed at building mutual trust and understanding, and creating an environment in which people feel free to express their ideas, opinions, problems, and concerns.

Our collaboration with Stanford and Fred Terman continued, and in 1954 we expanded on the fellowship program and established what became known as the Honors Cooperative Program, which allowed qualified HP engineers to pursue advanced degrees at Stanford. The program made it possible for us to hire top-level young graduates from around the country w

One of our most important management tasks is maintaining the proper balance between short-term profit performance and investment for future strength and growth.

Our long-standing policy has been to reinvest most of our profits and to depend on this reinvestment, plus funds from employee stock purchases and other cash flow items, to finance our growth. The stock purchase plan allows employees to apply up to a certain percentage of their salaries to purchase shares of HP stock at a preferential price. The co