The Legacy of Hewlett‑Packard: From a Garage Call to Enduring Management Principles

I believe that all the legends of Silicon Valley over the past 40 years originated from a phone call in 1967.

A 12‑year‑old boy flipped through the town yellow pages, found a number, and called without hesitation.

He asked, "Is this Mr. Hewlett of Hewlett‑Packard?"

The person on the other end replied, "Yes."

"My name is Steve, I need some electronic parts for a school project. Could you help me?"

"Sure."

They talked for 20 minutes. The next day, the boy’s father drove him to the company, where they received the parts and, unexpectedly, a summer internship.

The boy was Steve Jobs, then 12; the person who gave him the parts was Bill Hewlett, co‑founder of HP, then 54.

Forty years later, when Jobs reached Hewlett’s age, he told his biographer Walter Isaacson, "All my efforts have been to build a company as creative and enduring as HP."

From Jobs’s youth to his early adulthood, HP was the greatest company in Silicon Valley. Jobs later interned at HP for a long period, gaining valuable experience and developing a deep admiration for the firm. It is also worth noting that Apple co‑founder Steve Wozniak was a full‑time HP employee from age 21 to 26; in HP’s modest labs he assembled the world’s first personal computer using parts he collected there. At HP, Jobs and Wozniak forged a strong friendship that later gave birth to another great company.

In today’s internet era, HP seems to have faded. The company just quietly celebrated its 75th birthday, but it barely made a ripple in Silicon Valley, having shed its former halo and, like its old rival IBM, become a low‑profile infrastructure provider.

A few days ago, I met veteran Silicon Valley journalist Michael Miller, former PCMag editor for over a decade, at an event. I asked him, "Who do you think is the greatest company in Silicon Valley?" I expected Google or Apple, but after a long pause he named Hewlett‑Packard.

Someone once asked Jobs the same question. He led the asker from his Palo Alto home, walked several blocks to 367 Addison Avenue, the famous garage, and read the plaque verbatim: "The birthplace of Silicon Valley." He then said, "This is the greatest company in Silicon Valley." It was in that garage, in 1939, that HP’s two founders began their legendary journey.

To fill this historical gap, I spent a weekend studying HP’s history and downloaded from Kindle "The HP Way" written by the other founder, Dave Packard. After reading, I was amazed to find that, unlike many outdated managerial biographies, every lesson and insight in the book remains fresh and has undeniably become part of the genetic code of every Silicon Valley company, forming the core of its culture.

Below are some of HP’s lasting legacies:

Garage Culture

Before HP, no company built its headquarters in a garage or took pride in it. HP, however, proudly preserved its founding garage as a museum piece. Under this garage culture lies an engineer culture – great ideas must be realized, and realization requires hands‑on work. Both founders were engineers and pushed this culture to the extreme. According to records, in 1980 Packard invited a dozen Chinese officials to his coastal California villa; he realized at the last moment that there were no chopsticks. His solution was to go to the garage and personally craft ten pairs of chopsticks from red‑wood. Notably, HP never hired MBAs during the founders’ era, a practice inherited by most Silicon Valley firms.

Encouraging innovation is another great HP legacy. In the 1950s, Hewlett suggested banning engineers from routine work on Fridays, urging them to brainstorm “like wild horses”. Although Hewlett’s “free innovation time” never became as widespread as Google’s 20% time, it sent a clear message: be bold, try, and don’t fear mistakes.

Flat Management

Records show the founders often chatted with employees around a coffee pot and a few fried dough rings. Their offices were in the most remote parts of the campus, large yet austere. This open‑office style has been adopted by most Silicon Valley companies; today, whether it’s Facebook, Tesla, Airbnb, or Pinterest, CEOs and senior executives sit among regular staff. HP’s founders insisted employees call them "Bill" and "Dave", and they called everyone by name. They aimed to eliminate hierarchy: doors were open, walls knocked down, bottom‑level staff were consulted, and decisions were taken instantly rather than through lengthy plans. Benefits such as catastrophic health insurance, flexible work hours, decentralized decision‑making, and goal‑oriented management—all core to today’s Silicon Valley culture—originated at HP.

Mentor Culture

In 2010, shortly before Jobs’s death, Google co‑founder Sergey Peña called him, saying he wanted to visit. At that time Google and Apple were locked in an Android vs. iPhone war. Jobs’s first reaction was "Go to hell", but he soon thought, "Everyone in Silicon Valley helped me when I was young; I must mentor Pea as Bill Hewlett mentored me." He invited Pea to his bedside and taught him how to focus on product and recruit top talent. Jobs later told Isaacson, "I want to spend my remaining time helping the next generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, ensuring the bloodline of the greatest companies lives on." Undoubtedly, HP was the greatest company in his mind. Even though Apple and HP were competitors, Jobs maintained a mentor‑mentee relationship with Hewlett. When Jobs was ousted from Apple, the first thing he did was apologize to his mentor: "Sorry, I messed up."

Time has passed, and even a prodigy like Jobs has faded. Today’s Silicon Valley giants are still young – Pea and Elon Musk are 42, Mark Zuckerberg 30, many are in their early thirties. Some may have built companies more influential than HP, but achieving HP’s lasting endurance remains a heavy task. Chinese internet leaders face similar challenges. If they pick up the yellowed "HP Way", they may gain different insights.

Finally, let’s revisit some shining quotes from "The HP Way":

"What is the purpose of a company? Some say it’s to make money, but that’s a result, not a reason. We gather people together and call it a company to achieve things individuals cannot accomplish."

"What is HP’s purpose? Bill and I realized early that we exist to design and manufacture unique electronic devices for engineers."

"A manager’s duty is not to give orders, but to provide opportunities for employees to apply their intelligence most efficiently."

Eleven "Garage Rules" :

Believe you can change the world;

Complete work quickly, anywhere, without locking tools away;

Know when to work independently and when to collaborate;

Share your tools and ideas, trust your colleagues;

Avoid corporate politics and bureaucracy;

Only customers decide the quality of your work;

Radical ideas are often not bad ideas;

Strive to find different solutions to problems;

Make a little progress every day; if none, don’t leave the garage;

Believe the team’s wisdom can achieve anything;

Invent and create.