HP CEO Addresses 300 CIOs and Students at Smith

Rudy Lamone welcomes Carly Fiorina, MBA '80, to the Smith School before her keynote address to the CIO Forum and InForum on October 10.

She left the Smith School of Business in 1980 armed with an MBA degree. She returned on October 10 as one of the most dynamic business leaders in the world.

Addressing an audience of more than 300 technology leaders and Smith MBA students, Carly Fiorina, MBA '80, chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), talked about her time at Smith, leadership strategies, her company, and the biggest tech merger in history.
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The HP leader's return to the Smith School as keynote speaker for the CIO Forum and InForum 2003 came at the invitation of former dean, Rudy Lamone, who developed a mentoring relationship with Fiorina during her student days. Both events reflect the Smith School's mission to serve as a dynamic resource for the region's business community.

"Throughout the period I was here, I can tell you that I had great interactions with students," said Fiorina. "But it was deans and professors, most particularly Rudy Lamone, who made a huge difference in my life, by taking a chance on me, by taking me seriously, by asking me to do a major project for him, and by encouraging me every step of the way. He, as a leader, saw something about leadership in me and he gave me a different view of what was possible."

"Initially, she was concerned about her ability as a liberal arts graduate to compete with the so-called 'analytical jocks' who dominated the MBA programs in the '70s," recalls Lamone. "However, it soon became apparent that Carly could more than compete. I learned that she could get to the essence of an issue quicker than anyone I knew."

Fiorina said that her years at Smith were truly formative, but not just in terms of the skills she mastered, like marketing, operations research, and organizational behavior. "Here," she said, "I learned a different notion of what was possible. And I think in great measure. That is what leadership is about and that is what education is about."

She stressed that leadership is about unlocking the potential of others; it is a journey, not a destination; and power always comes from the connections between things.

"In some ways, this school is about the connection between technology and business," said Fiorina. "In many cases, we do research and development at HP and we find our biggest breakthroughs come when we bring disciplines together that generally have not worked together."

"One of my most important jobs as the CEO of a company that is now almost $75 billion - we operate in 176 countries, we have 140,000 employees, we spend $4 billion a year on research and development, we generate five patents a day, the rate of innovation has accelerated 350% in the past two-and-a-half years - in many ways, my most important job is to make the connections between ideas, between people, between disciplines," she said.

Since joining HP in July 1999, Fiorina has championed the reinvention of HP as a company that makes the Internet work for business and consumers, with a strategic commitment to return the company to its roots of invention and innovation. In May 2002, she led the HP merger with Compaq.

As a CEO, you have to see things before everyone else sees them. "When something is obvious, it is too late. The time to act is before it's obvious," she said.

"The HP Way" had become a shield against change. When people or companies become set in their ways, they become less successful. Technology was changing business. "We knew we had to build a stronger, more capable company," said Fiorina. "We have built a company specifically designed to respond to the fundamental shifts we see going on in technology."

If you're not leading, you're losing. "Every process will become digital, mobile, or virtual," Fiorina said. Technology has become core to every business, but it is becoming too complicated, and simplicity and manageability will become critical in the future. She said that most companies look at their businesses vertically, but she sees the world as "horizontal, heterogeneous, and connected."

Everything is possible, says HP's advertising campaign, and Fiorina believes it.

In addition to Fiorina, CIO Forum executive speakers included Mandy Edwards, CIO, Global eXchange Services; Gregor Bailar, executive vice president and CIO, Capital One; and Gary Christopherson, senior advisor to the Veterans Administration Under Secretary for Health. The event was co-sponsored by the Society for Information Management and the Smith School's Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises.

Organized by second-year MBA students, InForum 2003 provided a unique opportunity for area students and technology leaders to discuss and learn about technology and innovation in the marketplace. Panel participants discussed such topics as the role of mobile workers, network security, women in technology, and how organizations are using technology to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.