Strengths of HP’s Treatment of Corporate Entrepreneurship
HP’s treatment of Corporate Entrepreneurship exhibits several strengths. Like Apple, HP is organized for continuous innovation, a strategy that contributes to its goal of developing new advance product categories (Podolny & Hansen, 2020). HP has a dedicated group in The Innovation Program Office (IPO), which makes the clear implication that the company has entrepreneurship and innovation activities. The presence of the IPO also indicated the company has an objective of developing an innovative culture to enhance the continuous positive growth of the organization. Consistent with Sawhney et al. (2006), the firm also allows its employees and individuals outside the organization to present innovative ideas for evaluation at the IPO, which implies the management’s respect and value for any talent within and outside HP.
Furthermore, HP funds the IPO to ensure that the projects with metrics that satisfy the requirements to proceed are under the appropriate leader or executive with extensive networks and authority to convert a concept into a viable product or service for HP. HP’s numerous and diverse gates, including the team that constitute the IPO, are a significant strength to HP (Burgelman & Meza, 2008, p. 1). The diverse backgrounds and setups form a wholly purposeful and assorted group conversant with the corporate policy, direction, and culture to distinguish the appropriate elements for the positive growth of the firm.
HP’s approach to entrepreneurship involves a Producer model that constitutes a small team to establish new ideas. The management has committed a budget that focuses on developing new ideas for the growth and development of new products (Burgelman & Meza, 2008, p. 2). The company has also apportioned resources to include suitable projects into the production track. Like Noted by Chesbrough (2002), the innovation group has continued to make investments in new ventures. It leverages an opportunistic strategy to obtain hints such that a project ‘champion’ is considered to ensure the implementation of the directive. The ‘champion’ requires an individual with an intense passion for the project, although the leaders, including the executive gate-keepers, decide the project to maintain and graduate the IPO program.
The approval of a new idea and project requires evaluating a sequence of essential questions through the IPO. A team of members comprising of an advisory board of interdisciplinary senior members of the company needs to be in consensus on all aspects of the viability of the proposed project. After approval, a champion and a group are created and leave their existing functions to focus on product development, market research, and testing (Wolcott & Lippitz, 2007). After the graduation of a new project in the IPO program and has chances of successful scaling, the project leaves the incubation stage at the IPO and move to a different business unit called the Emerging Business Unit (Burgelman & Meza, 2008, p. 5). The Emerging business unit comprises groups that work on particular projects that have passed through the IPO but have not entirely undergone the routes that most HP products pass through. HP has a Global Business Unit channel that forms the traditional channel through which the core products are set up. HP brings teams together to participate in the management of emerging businesses according to the executive’s directives.
Weaknesses of HP’s Approach
HPs employees with compelling ideas are selected to join the IPO to shift and abandon their existing roles and join a new product team. The employees need to leave their initial roles and teams to start a different task with no guarantee of success in their new team and roles. In case of failure of a new project, an employee gets back to their previous station and duties with a likelihood of lost track with other existing group members.
The greatest weakness is that McKinney, the Vice President and CTO of the Personal Systems Group and the leader of the IPO group. McKinney’s intermingling with both teams and effort to operate effectively in both groups is likely to cause inefficiencies in the PSG, which is the bulk of HP’s core business (Burgelman & Meza, 2008, p. 3). It would be appropriate if HP assigned one individual to be solely dedicated to the IPO as the best solution instead of the head operating between two teams.
HP’s IPO Metrics in Evaluating New Ideas and their Significance
The IPO evaluates ideas using five crucial metrics to determine if the idea is good to move to the next phase. First, the IPO evaluates if the idea can fundamentally change consumer expectation or experience. The second question is the ability to alter the entire competitive landscape and attain the first or second position in the division. Thirdly, the IPO evaluates the likelihood of changing the industry’s economics since the firm works to influence the industry and not only the company. These questions make sense in choosing the right idea for further development rather than allocating resources in core products and work at the Labs. Although the Labs are important, innovations are significant since they form the fundamental initial step to produce what the Labs can test.
Lessons from HP Case Study
Assessment of the background of HP is essential in determining the factors that could affect the success of a business and the effects of a particular company’s strategy. I examined the background of HP including its approaches that enabled it to succeed. Its previous success before 2008 was due to the management’s focus on operational efficiency and profitable growth. I then evaluated the trend in growth which stagnated and failed to attract stakeholders’ interests.
Like HP’s strategy, it is essential to focus on profitable growth as a fundamental goal to appeal to stakeholders. The company has emphasis profitable growth with high focus on operational efficiency under the leadership of HP’s CEO Mark Hurd. HP achieved such growth but faced a challenge in 2008 after the firm failed to realize profitable growth that could satisfy leaders and other investors (Burgelman & Meza, 2008, p. 10). The corporation had lacked innovations and products to maintain the continuous growth in revenue despite investing in operational efficiency. HP’s case study implies that failure to allocate resources in innovation would risk a company’s opportunities to maintain continuous profitable growth in the long run.
Diversity in products and lines can help a firm to survive a downturn or market dynamics. Changes in the market can make a company obsolete if it is not sufficiently diverse. On the other hand, becoming extremely diverse would result in complexity and difficulty in implementation. HP should focus on innovations that focus on diversity but for closely related divisions such as printing on various materials. HP’s transformation need to continuously focus on being PC and print company to limit operational complexity.
References
Burgelman, R. & Meza, P. (2008). Innovation at HP: The role of innovation program office. Stanford Business Graduate School. Web.
Chesbrough, H. (2020). Making sense of corporate venture capital. Harvard Business Review. Web.
Podolny, J., M. & Hansen, M., T. (2020). How Apple is organized for innovation. Harvard Business Review. Web.
Sawhney, M., Wolcott, R. C., & Arroniz, I. (2006). The 12 different ways for companies to innovate. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(3), 75. Web.
Wolcott, R. C., & Lippitz, M. J. (2007). The four models of corporate entrepreneurship. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(1), 75. Web.