I attended a CEO Forum today hosted by SVASE that featured Hewlett Packard EVP of Strategy, Shane Robison. The goal was to share information, innovations, and insights on the small / medium business (SMB) market. The companies that attended represented mobility, rich digital media, security, and enterprise software.
The SMB market is important for HPís growth. Except for the printer business, its not really a place that HP has had much success except for channel sales. Its more important because its where the growth opportunities are currently in a number of important areas. His focus is on placing R&D bets in markets that will be very big 4-5 years from now. No surprise there. Blogs and social networking certainly appear to be in that camp ñ even though my feeling is that it will happen sooner overall.
I am constantly reminded that blogs and social media in general are still very much an unknown in most all corporations. Its certainly something to keep in mind ñ many people still have no idea what they are or how they work. Once you explain it, people certainly see the benefits, but the fact that you have to explain it remains a significant hurdle to widespread adoption ñ at least for now.
HPís belief is that as far as the internet is concerned, this is the ìend of the beginning.î It took the bubble to make the internet known to most humans on the planet and the next wave is approaching. Its out there, the next question is what do we do with it. The evolutionary process with the internet as a platform continues to change and reshape how we do just about everything. HP expects that to continue and possible accelerate. Note that Shane controls a $4 billion budget including HP Labs. The focus is on high tech, low cost, and best experience. I am sure everyone has seen this for themselves, printing digital pictures from a sub $100 HP printer.
One last note: after hearing all the stories about the Compaq merger, it was fascinating to meet with a person from HP where that topic was not mentioned by anyone. It was clear that the senior team believes the merger has been successfully completed and is behind them. There may be repercussions ongoing, but it was only mentioned at the end of the meeting in passing by Shane suggesting that he was surprised no one else mentioned it.
10:35:05 PM 
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