Making a surprise appearance and addressing media at the Global Influencer Summit 2012 in Shanghai, Meg Whitman the new CEO and President of HP took the opportunity of answering a whole lot of questions revolving around the company and its strategy going forward. HP launched 80 new products and made a strong statement that it is in committed to the PC & Print business. Various sessions outlined the company’s DNA with talks and sessions on R&D efforts, Innovation, Design, Quality & the importance of print. However the strongest statement of the summit was CEO Meg Whitman’s keynote and followup interaction with the media.
Less than a year ago, HP was seen in turmoil with announcement to sell off the consumer business, failed launch of the Touchpad and another change at the top with Meg Whitman replacing Leo Apotheker as the CEO. In her eight months as CEO, it seems that Meg Whitman has done plenty of streamlining at HP already. Coming in at a time when the the talks of world largest PC maker selling out were giving shivers to the industry, Meg took the view of the PC business on priority and within the first 30 days announced the decision of retaining the PC business.
That point marked the beginning of her productive role at HP, a shift from the disaster management that she originally began with. As she answers a question about her efforts as CEO in the past 8 months “we started to look at every business process and said how do we make this simpler? how do we make it easier to go to market? how do we make it easier to make decisions at HP. And that was the origins of putting IPG (our printing business) together with our PC business… “. Meg then went on to appreciate the quality of people at HP and said “best group of people I have had the privilege of working with in my 30 year of career in business”
HP stayed clear of any tablet / smartphone related comment during the entire show and Todd Bradley (Executive VP of HP’s Personal Systems Group) dodged all questions on that subject, however pretty much reaffirming the Microsoft Windows 8 partnership which would ultimately lead to tablets / Ultrabook releases. However HP highlighted its inventions in the area of memory (Memristor as it is called and a partnership with Hynix to bring the same to market by 2014-15), flexible displays (powering personal cloud connected private devices, wearable computers) etc.
When we have a audience of over 500 media people, we can surely expect some bouncers to be thrown. Answering one such question on her learning’s from China during her eBay days (and its impact on how she deals with HP), Meg Whitman highlighted that her time in China during eBay was tough and has taught her enough about the Chinese market. She acknowledged the difference of approach between western and Chinese culture, need for commitment and perseverance to the China market, importance of having Chinese people working to develop products for China and designing products for China (see video below).
At the end of the session, the only question on our mind, with the management issues stabilizing, would the worlds largest PC market bounce back to make the most of the opportunity in hand?
