HP and the Kittyhawk (BSSE, Tuesday, Week 9)
building-and-sustaining-successful-enterprisesyear-twoBSSE in a microcosm => Every single HP employee working on Kittyhawk project signed a pledge: "I am going to build a small, dumb, cheap disk drive!"
The project has management buy-in; managed as separate BU; adequate funding; no pressure to fit in to existing profit model; builds product based on customer feedback; delivers on time!; etc. EVERYTHING IS RIGHT!
Kittyhawk still produces an expensive disk drive, not a cheap one. The project is a miserable failure.
Today's class: disruption in HR. I am skeptical...
Summary: causal mechanism for management success is exposure to previous, "similar" situations (whatever that means).
Thus, select for past experiences & capacity to learn, not "adjectives" (past results).
Is this a meaningful/actionable distinction? I don't think so; reeks of distinctions that can be made in hindsight but cannot be easily discerned ex ante.