Can Leo Apotheker make Hewlett Packard a cool company?
Four months ago, Leo Apotheker took charge of troubled computer giant Hewlett Packard. But is he the man to turn things around? — On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Apotheker gave an exclusive interview to the BBC.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's board named Léo Apotheker CEO at the end of September 2010 after a stretch the outlet describes as 'troubled', and this Davos interview is his first high-profile attempt to define what kind of leader he intends to be. Notably, the BBC's framing is not operational but reputational: the question is whether he can make Hewlett Packard 'cool' — a test of brand relevance layered on top of the usual turnaround metrics.
That framing matters because Apotheker has so far had no public strategy moment of his own; four months into the job, a Davos-stage conversation with an international broadcaster is where investors, employees and rivals first get a read on his narrative. The interview travels without any syndicated pickup in the corpus, so its reach depends on how the 'cool company' benchmark sticks to every subsequent Apotheker appearance.
First-order effects
- Apotheker converts a private turnaround problem into a public narrative test: from now on, his statements are measured against the 'can he make HP cool' frame the BBC established at Davos in January 2011.
Second-order effects
- HP's perceived brand deficit pressures the company toward consumer-visible moves — products, marketing, acquisitions — rather than purely cost-led restructuring, since a cost story alone does nothing for the 'cool' question.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, legacy enterprise-hardware CEOs will increasingly be judged on cultural relevance alongside financials, making executive communication platforms like Davos a standing battleground for corporate repositioning.
The trend: Turnaround leadership at big tech incumbents is becoming a branding exercise as much as an operational one, with CEOs personally carrying the burden of making their companies culturally relevant again.