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Title: Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard by Peter Burrows ISBN: 0-471-26765-1 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 15 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (15 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Hard-hitting portrait of HP's CEO
Comment: There are two sides to every merger and in the case of HP and Compaq Computer Corp., the competing sides weren't just the companies. They include the historians documenting it.
Peter Burrows' Backfire paints Carly Fiorina as a brilliant marketer and communicator who stumbled into HP after one of the worst executive search jobs of all time by Christian Timbers. Her first two years was good idea after good idea followed by poor execution after poorer execution. The Business Week journalist implies the Compaq merger was primarily a way to deflect attention away from her inability to turn the company around after her first two years there.
And then there is George Anders' competing book about the merger, Perfect Enough. With access to Carly Fiorina and her fellow board members and executives, it provides a fuller picture of the genesis of the computing deal. Explaining the frustration board members felt at the company's inability to keep up with competitors benefiting from the Internet boom such as Dell Computer Corp. or release a killer new product since the laser printer in the early 1980s, Anders stresses that the board members - and not just Fiorina-were seeking a radical makeover.
Anders' more sympathetic account is fascinating at times such as its description of the complex relationship between Fiorina and David Packard's daughter Susan Packard-Orr. But, Burrows' book - unencumbered by any sense of loyalty to Fiorina, who snubbed the author - digs deeper into Fiorina's past by interviewing her ex-husband and childhood friends, thereby providing a much fuller picture of the executive, if not the entire organization.
Taken together, the two books complement each other nicely. It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the merger.
Rating: 5
Summary: He didn't have to drink the kool aid
Comment: In addition to being a compelling, insightful account of the merger announcement and ensuing proxy fight, Backfire gives a wonderful glimpse into the heart and soul of the most powerful woman in American business. Especially when it comes to the Lucent anecdotes and the revealing moments after she first arrived at HP, Burrows provides a rich tapestry of insight and examples that allow you to truly get your mind around (and inside) what makes Carly tick.
With a wealth of interview material to draw from obtained prior to the HP's decision to freeze him out, what this tome does without compromise is maintain its sense of impartial perspective -- a never wavering eye on the events of the past and present. No deal had to be struck and no compromises made in order to deliver this saga, and it is far more fascinating, honest, and revealing without those concessions.
Rating: 3
Summary: Burrows Fiorina account far too favorable in view of results
Comment: The main weakness of this book was that its treatment of CEO Fiorina was far more favorable than the facts warrant. The controversy over the 20 billion dollar merger should have been foreseen by the Board of Directors. Certainly there was ample evidence at the time of the proposed merger that Carly Fiorina's ideas and actions were incompatible with her role as head of a major American company. Burrows should have detailed many more of these. For example, she invested millions of shareholder dollars in a radical feminist group and even set them up with office resources at HP. She donated over $100,000 of her personal funds to an eccentric socialist training camp in Los Altos Hills. This is clearly a businesswoman that simply does not have her head screwed on right for business. The businessman George Soros has been rightly condemned in the business community for analogous nutty actions on a larger scale but Burrows mostly gives Fiorina a free pass on such activity, although his account is certainly better than most.
It has been nearly five years since Carly Fiorina took over HP and the bottom line result is that even after spending 20 billion on Compaq, the investment community values HP at less that half of what it was worth when she took over. Clearly, a much harder-hitting book from Burrows was warranted than what he produced, given the huge magnitude of the investor losses that have occurred since.
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Title: Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard by George Anders ISBN: 1591840031 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 23 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The HP Way : How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard ISBN: 0887308171 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 05 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation by Edgar H. Schein, Paul J. Kampas, Peter Delisi, Michael Sonduck ISBN: 1576752259 Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Pub Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry by Michael Dell, Catherine Fredman ISBN: 0887309151 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround by Louis V. Gerstner Jr. ISBN: 0060523794 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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