2011年8月18日，這一天，是惠普(HP)這塊金字招牌蒙塵之日。對Phil McKinney來說，這一天，他重新思考自己的未來，決定卸下惠普PC部門首席技術(shù)長的職位，轉(zhuǎn)而成為一位創(chuàng)新專家(innovation guru)。 今年8月，當(dāng)時的惠普CEO 李艾科 (Leo Apotheker)做出的策略宣示，就如同珍珠港事變中從天而降的大型炸 彈一般，震憾了整個業(yè)界。他扼殺了HP的WebOS智能手機和平板電腦業(yè)務(wù)，并表示考慮拆分PC部門。但一周后，Apotheker就卷鋪蓋走路了。 在稍早前的季度公司電話會議中，HP現(xiàn)任CEO Meg Whitman提到了8月18日?！爱?dāng)時一些人認(rèn)我們們可能就此離開硬件領(lǐng)域了，”她表示，李艾科的決策造成了這些混亂。 Whitman出掌HP的這段時間內(nèi)，她做出了終止拆分PC部門、增加10%研發(fā)投資等決定，誓言讓這家公司重回軌道。Whitman也表示，要到12月初WebOS的真正命運才會決定。

Phil McKinney

對McKinney來說，這陣子的騷動，只不過讓他回歸到一個全職顧問的角色，并有時間寫了一本新書《超越平庸》(直譯，Beyond the Obvious)，該書預(yù)計明年2月發(fā)表。 自李艾科宣布決策后，我認(rèn)為，現(xiàn)在是思考下一步該做什么的最佳時機了，McKinney稍早前在他位于舊金山的住家辦公室表示。 McKinney于8月22日在他的部落格上所發(fā)布的文章中含蓄地談到了惠普當(dāng)時的情況。他提到了對于創(chuàng)新支持必須更有耐性，這也呼應(yīng)了推出數(shù)周后隨即夭折的WebOS團隊命運。 然而，任何有關(guān)他在這家IT巨擘任職九年的直接評論，恐怕都只能等待今年12月31日他正式離開工作崗位后才能得知了，或許他會在新書中透露。在此同時，他也對Whitman給予了高度評價。Whitman是他任職HP九年中所經(jīng)歷的第四任CEO。 “她說的是對的，現(xiàn)在只剩下執(zhí)行問題而已，”McKinney贊同Whitman重新分配研發(fā)預(yù)算的做法。 他也主動給Whitman一些忠告：“要注意文化的力量，文化可能是助力，也可能是阻力?！? “文化因素可能在瞬間讓你的策略全然失效，”McKinney說?！澳憧赡苷J(rèn)為CEO有調(diào)動決策的權(quán)利，但你不能忽略，在做出任何決策時，文化可能產(chǎn)生的巨大影響力?！? “HP 有著令人難以置信的強勢固有文化──Bill和Dave甚至就像仍游走于公司大堂之中(Bill Hewlett和Dave Packard于1939年創(chuàng)辦惠普)?！边@是一個依靠創(chuàng)新而推動的工程組織，所以，無論是突然中止項目或減少預(yù)算，當(dāng)你削減對創(chuàng)新的投入時，很快這家公 司便會陷入照表操課，而且對所有行政高層形成抗拒之力，他表示。 換句話說，在經(jīng)歷Carly Fiorina、Mark Hurd和李艾科之后，HP善良的員工們承受了四次痛苦，因而導(dǎo)致這段日子以來他們極度的不確定感。 本文下一頁：WebOS還有未來嗎？ 本文授權(quán)編譯自EE Times，版權(quán)所有，謝絕轉(zhuǎn)載

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{pagination} 作為一位創(chuàng)新大師，McKinney認(rèn)為，創(chuàng)新是來自于學(xué)習(xí)與實踐。 “有人說這就像黑色藝術(shù)，一些人會幸運擁有，但另一些人則不，”他說。“我的看法是，這是一種人人都可以學(xué)習(xí)的技巧，創(chuàng)新并不是神賜予的禮物，所以你可以去學(xué)習(xí)和實踐它?！? 關(guān)鍵問題是讓你的想法掙脫束縛，這便是創(chuàng)新的核心價值，McKinney說。 我們都被釘死在教條下，我們在學(xué)校便受到教導(dǎo)，行事要遵守規(guī)范，他說?！岸钜o的，是一旦你無法直接回答，你就必須暫停，并發(fā)揮探索家的精神來尋找更新和更有趣的機會，”他表示。 這段時間以來，所有關(guān)于創(chuàng)新的討論都己超越了最新的商務(wù)時尚范疇，這代表著根本上的轉(zhuǎn)變，McKinney說。例如，一般在估算市場價值時，很大程度上是以工廠和機器等有形資產(chǎn)為基礎(chǔ)，但現(xiàn)在，專利等無形資產(chǎn)也成為評估企業(yè)價值的關(guān)鍵，而且許多企業(yè)的有形資產(chǎn)也逐漸減少。 “Google和Apple這類擁有激活下一波創(chuàng)新能力的公司，往往獲得更高的市場期待，”McKinney說。 “當(dāng)企業(yè)高層們看這些股價變化時，他們便會改變他們在雇用員工時的價值觀，因此，人們對自己的事業(yè)和職涯的思考也會產(chǎn)生巨大轉(zhuǎn)變，”他說。 在 即將邁入生涯下一階段之際，McKinney談到了HP WebOS設(shè)備，他希望這個行動操作系統(tǒng)能找到適合的家。市場傳說亞馬遜(Amazon)或許有意買下WebOS用在未來的Kindle中，或者，中國的 百度(Baidu)也可以用它來打造類似Google Android的系統(tǒng)。 McKinney表示，自他申請退休后，他就未曾參與這些決策了。但他也不忘提醒WebOS是首個基于新興HTML5標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的操作系統(tǒng)。 個人觀點，我認(rèn)為WebOS算是玩完了。它崛起的時間點，恰好遇到市場上有著4~5個熱門行動操作系統(tǒng)──Android、iOS、Blackberry和Windows Phone?，F(xiàn)在，隨著時間一天天過去，WebOS處境愈來愈不利，看起來更像是一個企業(yè)孤兒。 我很希望聽到你對于WebOS未來去向、創(chuàng)新經(jīng)濟，或是在Whitman掌舵下的HP未來發(fā)展的看法。請和我們一起討論吧！

HP一度打算將WebOS運用在從打印機、PC到智能手機和平板電腦等所有設(shè)備中。Yauesmc

編譯： Joy Teng 本文授權(quán)編譯自EE Times，版權(quán)所有，謝絕轉(zhuǎn)載 參考英文原文： Retiring HP exec talks innovation, WebOS，by　Rick Merritt

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{pagination} Retiring HP exec talks innovation, WebOS Rick Merritt SAN JOSE, Calif. – August 18 has become a sort of Day That Will Live in Infamy at Hewlett-Packard. For Phil McKinney it was the day he started re-thinking his future, decided to retire as chief technologist of the company's PC group and resumed his career as an innovation guru. It was no Pearl Harbor, but Leo Apotheker did drop a couple big bombs that day last August. He killed HP's WebOS smartphone and tablet business and said the company would consider splitting off its PC division. Weeks later, Apotheker lost his job as chief executive over the decisions which were widely criticized by observers including yours truly. Meg Whitman mentioned August 18 a handful of times last week in the company's quarterly earnings call, her first as the new CEO. "Some people thought we were getting out of hardware entirely," she said of the confusion Apotheker created. In her short time at the helm so far, Whitman has ended discussions about splitting of the PC unit (it stays), increased R&D spending ten percent and pledged to get the company back on track. Whitman reportedly gave herself until early December to decide what to do with WebOS. For McKinney the brouhaha was a cue to segue back into full time work as a consultant and finish up work on "Beyond the Obvious," his book on innovation due out in February. "With the [Apotheker] announcement and everything going on and the book coming out I decided now is a good time to think about what's the next thing I want to do," said McKinney speaking in his San Jose home office the day before Thanksgiving. Many readers interpreted McKinney's August 22 blog post on seven laws of innovation as his veiled take on what was happening at HP. It talked in part about the need for patience to support innovation in ways that resonanted with the WebOS team that got the axe just weeks after its first product launch. But if there will be any direct comment on his nine years at the IT giant it will come after his tenure officially ends December 31, perhaps in a subsequent book. In the meantime, he's giving guarded praise for Whitman, the fourth HP CEO in nine years. "She is saying the right things, now it's just a matter of execution and walking the talk," McKinney said, citing her moves to rebuild R&D budgets. He also offered Whitman some unsolicited advice: "Be aware of the power of culture; It can be helpful or a roadblock. "Culture eats strategy for lunch," said McKinney. "You may think the CEO makes the calls, but culture has at least as huge an influence as any strategy you come up with," he said. "HP has an incredibly strong culture--Bill and Dave still walk the halls," he said. "It’s a heavily engineering-driven organization fueled on innovation, so when you shortchange innovation whether through suddenly stopping programs people committed to or reducing budgets, it runs very counter to the culture and builds resistance to anything from the executive suite," he added. In other words, in the wake of scandals and missteps around Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd and Leo Apotherker, HP's good people are about four times bitten so ten times skeptical these days. Killer questions, WebOS As an innovation guru, McKinney comes from the pragmatist school. "Some people make it sound like a black art that some people are blessed with and others are not," he said. "My point is it’s a skill anyone can learn, it's not a gift from God, so you can learn it and practice it," he added. Killer questions that make you think out of the box are core tools of innovation, according to McKinney. He created a Twitter feed of such questions and considers his upcoming book the first full compendium of them. "We get stuck in following rules, we get taught it in school, staying in the lines and putting on blinders," he said. "The best killer questions are ones you can't directly answer, you have to pause and do a discovery process to find new and interesting opportunities," he said. All the innovation talk these days is more than the latest business fashion, it’s a shift of the tectonic plates, McKinney said. For example, market valuations used to be based largely on tangible assets like factories and machines, but now it's based on intangibles such as patents and even less quantifiable assets. "Google and Apple have high market caps related to the market's expectations of their ability to innovate the next big thing," McKinney said. "When executives see this sort of change in stock prices, it changes their values in hiring practices, so this is going to have a huge change in how people think about their businesses and careers," he said. As he heads into the next phase of his career, McKinney is taking his HP WebOS devices with him and hoping the mobile operating system finds a good home. Rumors suggest Amazon might want it for future Kindles, or maybe China's Baidu could use it in a play similar to Google's Android. McKinney says he has kept himself out of all such discussions since he submitted his retirement. But he is quick to praise WebOS for being the first mobile OS based on the emerging HTML 5 standard now being widely touted as a point of convergence. Personally, I think its curtains for WebOS. It started life as the fourth or fifth most interesting mobile OS—at best--behind Android, iOS, the Blackberry and Windows Phone. Now it slips further and further down the list with every day as a corporate orphan. I'd love to hear what you think about WebOS, the innovation economy or HP under Whitman. Sound off below. At one time, HP planned to install WebOS on everything from printers and PCs to smartphones and tablets.