Stanford University Press Blog

Innovation helps shape the HP Way

Looking at the histories of big companies, we often contribute their successes to the competent leaders and the loyal employees who follow their direction. But what if defiance could be even more of a breakthrough for a company’s success? In their book, The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation, Charles H. House and Raymond L. Price explain how not following the leader can yield great results for the individual, the leader, and the company. In a recent review in Forbes, George Anders commends House and Price for pointing out many of these sorts of bottom-up instances of success that were possible at HP.

It would seem like bad leadership to allow dissention to continue in your company, and even worse if these ideas that the leader rejects are good ones! As House and Price reveal, it is not bad leadership to create a company that is smart enough to run itself. One of the most intriguing anecdotes in the book is that of Charles House himself. As an HP engineer in the ‘60s, House was set on pursuing a large-screen electrostatic monitor. When he was told, “When I come back in a year, I don’t want to see that product in the lab!” by a superior, he took it as incentive to get the monitor out of the lab – and into production as soon as possible. When the monitor turned out to be a great success, House was awarded the “HP Award for Meritorious Defiance”. 

Who knew that ignoring a direct order from a superior could lead to success for all –profits for the company, awards for the defiant, and a successful product, which always reflects well on the leader. While House and Price’s account is certainly not advocating for complete defiance in business relations, it points out how success can come from the most surprising innovations.  For HP, seeking new methods of business management and surprising the world with new techniques is what helped to create the HP Way. Despite some flaws along the way, the stories of unexpected as well as the intricately planned successes leave House and Price very optimistic about the future of this ground-breaking company.

Are you in need of a transformation? Goldman on Transforming Toxic Leaders

We all encounter problems in the workplace at one time or another: your boss is too hard on you, you don’t get along with your co-workers. But these are minor complaints that most of us learn to deal with. Lately, there have been major concerns coming up about toxicity in the workplace. Alan Goldman, author of Transforming Toxic Leaders, discusses in an interview on Psychjourney Podcasts how “toxic” leaders affect the workplace and how, many times, a transformation of the organization of the system is what can remedy a toxic situation, not just an adjustment of the leader themselves.

Toxic leaders can be described in many ways and often share a set of common traits. These traits not only make them hard to deal with, but often contribute to their success. Narcissism, obsessive compulsive tendencies, attention to technical detail – these are all traits which can make a leader great at his trade, but horrible at creating a functional working environment.

Goldman asserts that while there are cases where a toxic leader would be toxic in any situation, in many cases you can eliminate toxicity by reorganizing the structure of the workplace and putting experts in their rightful places. He uses the example of a surgeon who is a master of the technical aspects of his job but has no communication skills, yells, and makes his co-workers and patients feel scared or uncomfortable. Goldman coached the surgeon and suggested reorganizing the staff team so that the master of the surgical aspects of the profession worked in tandem with a surgeon with personal skills.

Overall, Goldman attributes toxicity in the workplace to individual psychology and staff organization – the latter being infinitely easier to deal with. With these ideas in mind, one might ask if toxicity is a necessary result of becoming a successful leader. Is it possible to become a master without creating a toxic environment? Goldman seems optimistic that non-toxic environments can exist and that even if toxicity enters the workplace, it can be eliminated.

Perhaps the next time you go to work you’ll look around and ask if your work environment is “working.” If not, how can you eliminate toxicity?

Demands for Net Neutrality: What have we been missing?

Most of us like to think that we have control over what we view on the internet, but as recent controversies involving broadband providers and internet search engines suggest -- perhaps we don’t. In an Op-Ed in the Short Stack column of The Washington Post, Dawn Nunziato addresses the issue of protecting free speech in the internet age. Nunziato, author of Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age, draws on her knowledge and research of First Amendment violations on the internet to uncover how internet providers and websites are limiting users’ freedom.

Nunziato explains that the FCC is now working toward requiring broadband providers to be neutral parties within internet communications. But why should the FCC have to take such measures?  Aren’t we already free to express and view whatever we want on the internet? After all, that’s what blogs like this one are for.  But according to Nunziato, not everyone is enjoying the same rights.

In both her book and the Op-Ed, Nunziato references occasions where companies like Verizon, Google, and Comcast have limited the actions of certain users. “In 2007, for example, Comcast blocked access to legal peer-to-peer file-sharing applications and then withheld information from its users (and the FCC) about its actions.” How is it that these sorts of violations to our right to free speech have been going on right before our eyes? 

Nunziato asserts, “The FCC and the EU should act now to require that the handful of powerful companies who serve as the gatekeepers for Internet expression fulfill their obligations to the public free of discrimination and censorship to protect our free speech interests in the digital age.” 

So the next time you’re on the internet, ask yourself: Just how much have I been missing?

The Roots of Israel's Obsession with Iran

In an interview with Swati Pandey of Zocalo Public Square, Israeli scholar, Hagai Ram and author of  Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession,  remarks that he became "increasingly disenchanted" with the Israeli ways of understanding Iran, "While there are many good reasons for the Jewish state to be apprehensive of the Islamic republic, I felt there was also a great deal of irrationality involved in that apprehension, and it is the cultural roots of that irrationality I sought to investigate in my book."  Read the full interview here. The book steps back from all-too-common geopolitical analyses to show that Israel's disagreements with Iran are as much a product of shared cultural trajectories and entangled histories as they are strategic concerns and political differences.  In an article in Informed Comment, Ram discusses how Israel has time and again (ab)used the specter of the “Iranian threat” in order to  divert attention from its own oversights,  such as the war crimes associated with its military strike in Gaza earlier in the year, and the continuation of the state-sanctioned apartheid regime in the Palestinian territories.