Rating: 
Summary: Culture Change/Growing Pains
Review: "Perfect Enough" gave me a broader, deeper look at a company that had grown almost mythical in Silicon Valley. It's a tale of how difficult it is to change culture and people, especially when it means inflicting pain to change and grow. It's also a solid chronicle of an executive's career--in this case Carly Fiorina--and how she also morphed and changed as she tried to reform and update the HP Way. While no book could offer every side into the complexities of the HP story and its merger with Compaq, "Perfect Enough" offers a deeply reported story into how HP went from the mythic bastion of engineers watched over by Hewlett and Packard to a company struggling to find its place in the down and dirty world of high technology in Silicon Valley.
Rating: 
Summary: Formerly the best outfit on earth or how Carly wrecked HP
Review: A puff piece book about Carly. Avoid. She has been a disaster at HP and left Lucent just before it all came crashing down. Try the other book about Carly. Learn how a former dial tone sales person wrecked one of the greatest companies in American history. I am not an HP employee just an ex-customer.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfect Enough
Review: a thoroughly reported and balanced account of a pivotal event in business history. It makes it clear why sometimes CEOs have to be different than the rest of us in order to save a company. And its balance is in sharp contrast to the almost ridiculously biased Peter Burrows "Backfire".
Rating:
Summary: Anders vs. Burrows
Review: As someone who followed the HP acquisition of Compaq in the press, it was interesting to read two very different accounts of it in the books by Anders and Burrows. Both were well-written. The difference is that Anders was relatively objective and balanced; Burrows wrote an anti-Fiorina manifesto. There are no bad guys in Anders' book: he portrays the pro- and anti-merger forces in fair terms, warts and all. Burrows appears to be smarting over not having as full access to the HP side as he did to the Hewlett side, and it permeates his book. Reading about the same event or discussion in each, one comes away with a much more in-depth, balanced view of the item from Anders. No surprise that Anders is the one who has won a Pulitzer Prize for prior work.
Rating:
Summary: Packed With Knowledge!
Review: Carly Fiorina is a controversial character who engineered one of the most contentious, notorious mergers in business history. Author George Anders has written a fast-paced, gripping to read, account of Ms. Fiorina's career, Hewlett-Packard's history and the controversial events surrounding the hard-fought merger. His account is quite friendly to Ms. Fiorina, and rarely criticizes her. Anders tilts noticeably against her antagonists, especially the curious Walter B. Hewlett, son of the company's co-founder and philanthropist. He had significant influence over the family foundation, but its fortunes depended on the fate of the company and HP stock. We find this narrative indispensable to understanding the history of the merger. It reveals high-level boardroom politics and maneuvering, and brings alive the breathtaking pace and fiery personalities involved. (And, if you want a contrasting view, a previous book, Backfire, promoted Walter B. Hewlett's side of the controversy.)
Rating: 
Summary: So much fluff - like the great woman herself
Review: Carly Fiorina took over HP in July 1999. Some interesting numbers since that time:
Lexmark shares up 40%
Canon shares up 16%
Dell shares up 3%
IBM shares down 23%
HP shares down 60%
(Look it up on money.msn.com)
Ms. Fiorina also entered saying that HP should dump the printing business in order to concentrate on e-commerce. 3 years later, that business was being described as HP's crown jewels. She also claimed that what HP needed was more accountibility (see numbers above). And we're supposed to be interested by her views on business?
Rating:
Summary: NOT Perfect Enough
Review: Carly has finally left HP in disgrace. She's been lambasted on the cover of Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and Salon. What people inside HP have known since 2001, is finally becoming mainstream.
People are beginning to wonder whether HP will survive. Inkjet cartridges are all that's left making a profit.
But this book is worth more than 1 star because it contains some information important for HP history.
Buy "Backfire" first, then read this.
Rating:
Summary: Another great story owhy capitalism and democracy works best
Review: George Anders has done a great job in narrating the story of the reinvention of HP. He covers three important areas - 1) the legacy of the founding fathers and the HP corporation, 2) how capitalism, democracy and legislative systems work together in the best interest to future growth, not only for a corporation but also for the economy as a whole, 3) an illustration of how the new generation of leaders like Carly Fiorina are making waves for the new economy.
This is a good read for anyone who's interested in leadership, new economy and the corporate affairs.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great read
Review: George Anders tells a great story of how corporations work. It is one of the few business books I have read that is a real page-turner. Carly Fiorina is a woman that all those good old boy CEOs can learn a lot from. She's got guts. The author obviously did his homework.
Rating:
Summary: Useful Hewlett-Packard account, but terribly flawed.
Review: George Anders' "Perfect Enough...", a history of the Carly-
era at Hewlett-Packard with an emphasis on the proxy fight
over the Compaq merger is a useful book but it is not a good
book. It is useful because it presents how Carly Fiorina and
the HP Board wish to be viewed. This is helpful to those
who wish to understand how to better communicate with the
HP Board. The reason this is a bad book is its poor treatment of Walter
Hewlett, David Woodley Packard and even the late Bill
Hewlett. HP engineers and HP alumni also are unjustifiably
demeaned. While this is unfortunate, I have no doubt that
this reflects the attitude of Carly Fiorina and some members
of the Board. Anders did manage to document a few new interesting HP
anecdotes, but given his sloppy, low energy research, I don't
know how much faith to place in these. For example, he
refers in the book to the most famous memo Dave Packard
ever issued, but apparently did not even bother to obtain a
copy, because it was missing from the archives. Even a brief
visit to HP's computer operations would have resulted in
multiple copies of this memo being supplied by staffers, over
25 years after it was issued. The interesting anecdote is a Carly quotation where she
expresses her animus toward powerfully-built men, as
indicated by their neck size. It is useful to remember that
capitalism requires animal spirits, and Carly's attempt to
eliminate these at Hewlett-Packard, unless corrected, will
bring about HP's destruction.
| 
