In a dry fashion, Packard tells the true story of the mighty Hewlett-Packard Company: Two college buddies begin a partnership by producing an audio oscillator in a Palo Alto garage in 1938 and wind up 60 years later with a $25-billion-dollar electronics company on their hands. He wraps the book up tidily with a timeline of the company's development milestones. Packard chalks up success to many things, including government contracts during wartime, but mostly to the company's management outlook ('The HP Way'), which champions openness, honesty, and flexibility throughout the organization. Entrepreneurs and technologists alike will be interested in this journey of an American giant. Packard's tone sometimes veers toward the self-congratulatory, but in this case, it somehow seems justified.Much more personal than standard corporate histories, David Packard's The HP Way provides insights into managing and motivating people and inspiration for wouldbe entrepreneurs. This bestselling classic joins the Collins Business Essentials lineup with a new Note from Steve Jobs. From a onecargarage company to a multibilliondollar industry, the rise of HewlettPackard is an extraordinary tale of vision, innovation and hard work. Conceived in 1939, HewlettPackard earned success not only as a result of its engineering knowhow and cuttingedge product ideas, but also because of the unique management style it developed  a way of doing things called 'the HP way'. Decades before today's creative management trends, HewlettPackard invented such strategies as 'walkaround management', 'flextime', and 'quality cycles'. Always sensitive to the needs of its customers and responsive to employee input, HewlettPackard earned massive steady growth that far outshone its competitors' vacillating fortunes, even with radically different products from those responsible for its initial boom. For entrepreneurs and managers alike, the wisdom found in these pages is invaluable if they want their businesses to gain steady growth and consistent success.