Does H.P. Need a Dose of Anarchy?
IT all seems obvious when viewed through hindsight's pristine lens: Hewlett-Packard didn't need a reinvention. It just needed some fierce fiscal discipline to transform itself from a bumbling, lost soul into a well-oiled profit machine.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two months after Fortune framed Mark Hurd's moment as a turnaround story, this New York Times column asks what kind of turnaround it actually was. Its answer, echoing the analysis circulating since Hurd took over: HP became a profit machine through fierce fiscal discipline rather than any reinvention — which raises the uncomfortable question the headline poses about whether the company has traded away its appetite for bold moves.
The timing matters because HP is not standing still while it cuts costs: it beat Apple to market with the first multitouch laptop in late 2008, and a reported $12-13 billion acquisition of Electronic Data Systems — still unconfirmed in the reporting — would push the company deeper into services. The column's 'dose of anarchy' framing is really a question about whether an operations-led CEO can fund that kind of ambition.
First-order effects
- Mark Hurd's cost-discipline playbook comes under editorial scrutiny precisely as it delivers results, forcing investors to weigh HP's restored margins against a thin record of reinvention.
- HP's own product moves — first to market with a multitouch laptop in November 2008 — give the company evidence it can still innovate, complicating the column's premise that discipline has crowded out daring.
Second-order effects
- If HP pairs continued cost discipline with the rumored multibillion-dollar EDS acquisition, rivals like Dell and IBM face a competitor competing simultaneously on price structure and services scale.
- A public debate over whether HP needs 'anarchy' puts pressure on the board's succession calculus: boards watching Hurd's model now have to decide whether operational CEOs can be trusted with innovation budgets.
Third-order effects
- The episode crystallizes a recurring tension in large-cap tech turnarounds — whether finance-driven recoveries structurally starve R&D cultures, a debate every post-crisis restructuring inherits.
- If the pattern holds, big-tech leadership tilts toward operators who cut first and invent second, with innovation outsourced to acquisitions rather than internal reinvention — the trade-off this column is probing.
The trend: Post-2008 technology turnarounds are choosing fiscal discipline over reinvention, and the market is beginning to ask whether margins bought that way come at the cost of innovation capacity.