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person1939-2001

Bill Hewlett

Disciplines:
business
management
engineering

Summary

Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard — the company that, with David Packard, created the management philosophy of 'The HP Way' and effectively founded Silicon Valley as a technology culture.

Core Contribution

The HP Way: Hewlett and Packard invented a management philosophy that influenced virtually every significant technology company that followed — profit sharing, decentralized management, management by walking around (MBWA), treating employees as trusted adults, investing in R&D for its own sake. The HP garage (Palo Alto, 1939) is the symbolic origin of Silicon Valley as a culture of founder-engineers building technology companies. Bill Hewlett's technical contributions (the audio oscillator sold to Walt Disney for Fantasia) demonstrate the engineer-entrepreneur archetype.

Historical Influences

Frederick Terman

Intellectual Lineage

Stanford University Technology CommunitySilicon Valley Origins

Contemporaries & Peers

David Packard Frederick Terman

Minds Influenced

Silicon Valley Culture Management Theory Technology Industry

Intellectual Posterity

Silicon Valley Culture HP Management Theory

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Bill Hewlett

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