HP's Hurd: Whatever you do, don't mention her

Hewlett-Packard boss Mark Hurd was in a mood to take a victory lap, not reminisce about any contribution Carly Fiorina may have had to the company's stellar success.

Since Hurd joined the company during the second quarter of 2005, shares of HP stock have climbed from $18 to $47. So it is that this once little-known NCR executive has become the gold standard by which CEOs get measured.

True to form, Hurd didn't try to hog all the credit for the turnaround. Instead, he lavished praise on his HP underlings.

"The view that the company was in horrible shape at that time was overblown," said Hurd, speaking in San Francisco on Friday at the iMeme conference organized by Fortune magazine.

But when the lights came on and Hurd took questions from the audience, media consultant Sam Whitmore wanted to know how much credit the CEO would apportion to Fiorina, his immediate predecessor.

Hurd begged off, saying he doesn't "metric-ize." (Or at least that's what it sounded like. Truth be told, I don't know if that's even English.) Whitmore, the former editor in chief of PC Week, was having none of it and pressed Hurd for a straight answer.

"I don't think it's a relevant question," Hurd responded and changed the topic.

Maybe he would have had more to say if Whitmore had asked about pretexting.

[JuggerNaut]

Carly Fiorina helped set the wheels in motion for HP's success!

I have no doubt in that! Now if HP can leverage Linux on its desktops give give real choice to consumers (like that of Dell), then they might be a shining star beyond just making investors happy in the future ;-)

[joshsc]

Wrong..

Although Carly did a great job for a long time, she made some bad decisions at the end of her reign. Most notably was the rebranding of the Ipod with an HP logo. This was a total flop.

[Stating]

Why Does The Compaq Brand

Why does the Compaq brand still exists, other than for nostalgia? As far as I can tell there is basically no difference between an HP computer and a Compaq computer. Does HP have THAT much invested in Compaq branded sticky labels?

[joshsc]

Because.....

...the Compaq line is targeted to budget or business users and the Pavillion line is targeted to entertainment users.

The Compaq desktops are easier to upgrade and have more space to do so.

[tomcam]

Great Question

The only thing I remember about Compaq computers is terrible design, many non-standard parts, and tons of crapware. Oh, and yes, they did get to market first with a 386, back when their products were more like BMWs than Yugos.

[dsf32]

The reason is...

The reason the Compaq brand is still around is for shelf space. Stores like Best Buy or Circuit City will only set aside a max amount of slots for a company. If the company has two brands, they get twice the amount of shelf space.

[garyts]

Remember Lucent???

I'm tired of all these CEO's claiming sole credit for the collective
work of ten of thousands of employees.

Carly is quick to claim credit for laying the foundation for HP's
current success, but what about her tenure at Lucent? Prior to
coming to HP as CEO, Carly was Vice President of Lucent.
Lucentt's reported sales were flying high at the time of her
departure, which was the very reason she was selected as CEO
material.

However soon after Carly leaves Lucent it is discovered that
Lucent's high flying sales were due to a questionable business
practice called "stuffing the channel". That's basically where the
vendor books equipment shipped to their distributors (but not
yet sold to anyone) as sold items.

When Lucent's sales figures were found out to be due to
"stuffing the channel" the stock plummetted. Lucent has never
recovered since then.

Why doesn't Carly take credit for laying the foundation for the
demise of Lucent???

[garyts]

By the way..

Carly was Vice President of SALES when she was at Lucent so she
had direct responsibility for the sales reporting practice for the
corporation.

[saleh-dd]

Hey boy genius

Never mind the significant improvement in HP's product, timed with Dell's quality dive into the toilet.

*******.