Rating: 
Summary: Fiorina's harmful international impact ignored
Review: My major concern with this book is that it vastly understates the negative impacts any poor HP CEO, and in particular Carly Fiorina, can have. The negative impacts are not limited to HP shareholders, employees and customers, whom few people seem to care about. A few months ago Fiorina bought a 10,000 person Indian software firm, adding greatly to HP's huge investment in India. Inappropriate investments, HP and otherwise, are greatly resented in India, because it reinforces corruption in the culture that prevents improved living conditions for most Indians. Your Ronald Reagan dealt with the corrupt culture in the Soviet Union in a vastly superior way -- not by financially supporting corrupt bureaucrats and communist state governments (as Fiorina has done in India) but by dealing very sternly with these malfactors. Fiorina's investments have caused great harm in India. A few days ago Atal Vajpayee's government was voted out and the communists are going to call many of the shots in the new government. This is very, very bad for about a billion Indians. These potential international impacts should have been given attention in Burrows book. HP and a few other big US firms caused this senseless suffering in pursuit of corruption in India. The motivation for HP to outsource to India in the way they are doing it is certainly not cost savings (which don't really exist) -- the motivation is a combination of graft (doing business in India requires bribes, and once slush funds are created it is impossible to determine weather the bribes really go to Indian bureaucrats or whether American managers pocket most of the cash) and the desire of Carly to remove herself as far from actual production and productive people as possible. It is said she does not even use the company cafeteria because she could find herself too close to actual HP workers. I would hope in the future America would produce more great leaders like Ronald Reagan and find ways to keep harmful ditzy people like Carly Fiorina out of leadership positions. Burrows book would have been much better with a discussion of these international impacts.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Peter Burrows offers insights into high level business, where personality matters more than economics, as he explores the mammoth HP-Compaq merger. Most mergers fail to make money or to produce the promised "synergies" so, he asks, why - other than ego - do CEOs pursue them? Though stylistically somewhat trite, this book successfully explores the HP Board's decision to approve the merger, with Walter B. Hewlett's vote in favor, and his subsequent lonely, ultimately quixotic battle against it. The most contentious issues in contemporary business are all here: shareholder rights and value vs. CEO power; employee-oriented cultures vs. "re-engineering;" corporate integrity vs. sharp practice; and the interesting spectacle of a ruthless, hard-headed female CEO pitted against a sensitive, cello-playing man. The author says Hewlett-Packard executives were told not to speak with him after he quoted merger critics in Business Week, so there is an inevitable Walter Hewlett bias. We found this to be a very good read, even a must read, for corporate warriors.
Rating: 
Summary: WOW!...
Review: Simply one of the best business books written in the last ten years. If you want to understand the true story of how an outsider invaded the HP culture and forced an ill-conceived merger that wrecked the HP that once was, read this book! If you want to read a piece of Carly p.r., read Perfect Enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Journalism?
Review: The main tragedy of this book is that Burrows is a horrible journalist. The title of the book should read: "Why I don't like Carly Fiorina". This reader can't help but have the feeling that had jr. Hewlett denied Burrows access and Fiorina granted more interview time, he would sing her praises. In one way, I can speculate to how Burrows empathizes with jr. Hewlett, they both are guilty of sitting on the sideline, being righteous in their distant criticisms, and both are severely lacking any accountability. Now if I could just go back in time pick the book up at the library instead of putting my money towards the book's sales figures...
Rating:
Summary: Burrows Fiorina account far too favorable in view of results
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Burrows Fiorina account far too favorable in view of results
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Values Vs Valuation
Review: The merger of HP and Compaq has been the most controversial and reported business story in recent times. Built on the core ethical and business values of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, from the humble beginnings at the garage in 1938, HP over the decades had grown up to a reputation of being one of the most admired and respected companies. The company provided an informal work environment where innovation became a way of life. Customers and employees had a strong emotional bond with this company and profits were a by-product of this long term relationship and trust. If I were to visit just one place in the United States, it would be 329, Addison Avenue. Enter 2001 and suddenly, a new CEO, a merger and a pitched battle between the Board and Walter Hewlett, the conscience keeper of the old guard. Not many companies have been spared by the mass mania of the dot com and internet boom of the 90's. Unfortunately, HP has also had its share of infection. Revenue growth, aggressiveness and a sales orientation became the new mantra in the rat race for achieving higher market valuation, as perceived by the analysts on Wall Street. We have witnessed scores of CEOs falling in line with and an easy prey to this myopic quarter chasing disease, that to call it a rat race might be defamatory of rats. This book is an excellent narration of HP's sad and painful transition in this era. I would not like to comment upon or take sides in the corporate battle and its outcome at HP. Today it is history and only of academic interest. The historian and the academic would know it better. But what would be interesting is to watch the direction for the new HP from now on. The book tends to give a feeling that the HP way is no longer relevant and the new leadership has shaken up the company and its culture. The concept of lifetime employment and entitlements for benefits is out. Compensation has been linked closely with performance and the new HP is ready to take off. As of now only one engine is "printing" enough power. Other engines are struggling to "compute". Good Luck HP. You are "Built to last". You should be forewarned that you might not be able to put down this book easily till you have reached the last page.
Rating:
Summary: Hard-hitting portrait of HP's CEO
Review: 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:
Summary: CEO impact on lower-level managers needed in book
Review: This book contained a lot of good material concerning the interaction of Carly Fiorina and her highest-level executives. However, Burrows' coverage of her impact on lower level managers in critical positions was inadequate. The failures of such managers can have major impacts on HP for potentially decades and thus deserve scrutiny. A good example prior to the Fiorina era was when HP lost over 60 points of market share in the technical workstation market in the 1980s which also led over time to a weakened server market position, due to lost technical and financial leverage. The current value of this loss may be as high as 10 billion dollars in revenue yearly.
The keynote address by her Vice President for Linux at LinuxWorld yesterday illustrated well the huge risks HP is taking by having lower level executives like this VP adopt her approach. While this area is currently too small to register on the Board of Director's radar, critical market battles are currently being fought that will strongly influence HP financials for a long time. Carly Fiorina's bad influence was evident in VP Martin Fink's keynote address. This speech spent a lot of time promoting Linux, which customers can buy from many vendors, and virtually no time promoting HP's value-added. HP makes money whether it sells Linux or Windows-based machines. There is no real incentive to for HP to sell an HP-Linux machine instead of an HP-Windows machine, or vice versa.
Why is HP's Martin Fink wasting valuable time in front of a huge audience promoting one side of an issue that is a don't care situation (with respect to Windows) and potentially a losing proposition (with respect to HP_UX) to HP financially? Note that HP has no time to waste in this market, the market leader at present, due to earlier HP missteps, is Dell Computer, not HP.
What Martin Fink should have been promoting is why customers should buy HP Linux systems as opposed to IBM or Dell Linux systems, instead of arguing customers should buy Linux instead of other alternatives that HP also makes. Martin Fink's mistake yesterday is a typical Carly mistake, to get caught up in promoting what is fashionable, rather than what is best for HP. The lack of loyalty to HP implicit in his address has also been a familiar issue to Carly observers - that she is promoting herself far more than she promotes HP.
The central theme of this example, the appalling deviation from business basics that Carly inspires in her team, is one that was deserving of much more attention in Burrows book. Corporate marketing resources need to be focussed on beating the competition, not on taking market share from one HP division and transferring it to another, or promoting the next job for some executive, whether that executive is Fink or Fiorina. It seemed yesterday that Martin Fink was promoting himself for some more senior Linux position at some other firm, which would explain his lack of HP advocacy, something Fiorina is thought to do in promoting herself for political office using her HP soapbox. It is also a good demonstration why the point of view prevalent on some unengaged Boards, that a CEO as just a public relations representative is adequate, is so misguided.
Rating:
Summary: You may not like the anti-Carly stance, but it is the fact
Review: This book talks about the original HP spirit and how Carly Fiorina's character does not fit with the HP culture.
The company is definitely heading towards the wrong direction. Very soon, it will be remember as a company that a lot of people used to like to work at.
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