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HP Is Now Two Companies. How Did It Get Here? (cio.com)
New submitter joshroberts3388 writes: If Hollywood wanted a script about the inexorable decline of a corporate icon, it might look to Hewlett-Packard for inspiration. Once one of Silicon Valley's most respected companies, HP officially split itself in two on Sunday, betting that the smaller parts will be nimbler and more able to reverse four years of declining sales. HP fell victim to huge shifts in the computer industry that also forced Dell to go private and have knocked IBM on its heels. Pressure from investors compelled it to act. But there are dramatic twists in HP's story, including scandals, a revolving door for CEOs and one of the most ill-fated mergers in tech history, that make HP more than a victim of changing times.
And after buggering up HP so bad as to cause this split, that CEO is now running for president.
By all accounts things only started to go south when Bill and Dave left and were replaced by a series of bean counters with no sense for what gives a tech company positive buzz and positive sales growth. Carly being example 1. Meg being example 2.
HP is splitting as "HP Inc." and "Hewlett-Packard Enterprise", which is quite boring. It would have been more fun to split as "Hewlett" and "Packard".