Overview
"Reading at times like a Clancy novel and at others like a Greek tragedy, Burrows's Backfire presents a detailed picture of how a leader can rob a company of its soul and cause it to stray from the principles that had made it enduringly great. Read it and weep."
—Jerry I. Porras Lane Professor of Organizational Behavior and Change Emeritus, Stanford Business School coauthor, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
"Peter Burrows has written a fascinating account of the largest high-tech merger and proxy fight of all time. Riveting stories about Carly Fiorina, Walter Hewlett, and the melodrama in the HP corporate boardroom make this book a great read as well as an object lesson in corporate governance and corporate change."
'David B. Yoffie Starr Professor of International Business Administration, Harvard Business School author, Judo Strategy: Turning Your Competitors? Strength to Your Advantage
"Carly Fiorina's story as told by Burrows illustrates well the timeless role of leaders: to help organizations work through necessary but painful changes that don't happen naturally."
Robert Burgelman Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business coauthor, Strategy Is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company's Future
"A well-researched view inside the controversial management transition at HP. The personality-dominated decision-making process at HP shows us how the power of personalities can override and reshape business legacies. Backfire has all the makings of a modern historical novel."
Regis McKenna author, Total Access and Relationship Marketing: Successful Strategies for the Age of the Customer
"At a time when corporate governance was a most important issue in American business, the merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq produced a proxy battle that should have embarrassed everyone involved. Backfire tells the story in all its gory detail. It is must reading for investors, executives, and anyone who cares about corporate governance."
—Roger McNamee cofounder, Integral Capital Partners and Silver Lake Partners
Synopsis
An insider's look at the internal turmoil at one of the world's premier high-tech companies
This is the inside story of Hewlett-Packard Company's struggle to regain its former glory, and of the high-stakes battle between CEO Carly Fiorina and family scion Walter Hewlett over how best to achieve that goal. For decades, HP was admired not only for its innovative products and soaring stock price, but for its egalitarian corporate culture and father-knows-best integrity. Backfire explains how the company fell on hard times, recounts the historic decision that made Fiorina the world's top-ranking female executive, and brings to life the backlash that resulted when she tried to impose her charismatic salesmanship on the aging icon. Top BusinessWeek journalist Peter Burrows gives the dramatic blow-by-blow of Hewlett's effort to kill Fiorina's most controversial move of all, her $19 billion purchase of rival Compaq Computer. Fiorina won by a whisker, after the most expensive proxy fight in history and a dramatic lawsuit that accused the company of illegally fixing the vote. This gripping, ongoing story includes fascinating personalities and dramatic boardroom and courtroom drama.
Peter Burrows (Alameda, CA) has been a technology reporter for BusinessWeek for nine years and has covered the HP saga from the start. The department editor for BusinessWeek's computer coverage, he has been the principal chronicler of Fiorina's tenure at HP, and has written three cover stories on the subject. He has also written numerous other cover stories, including looks at Steve Jobs's Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy.
The New York Times
Taken on its own, Backfire is a riveting, colorful, fast-paced account of the Compaq battle. It is informed by a deep empathy for rank-and-file employees and retirees, who felt a profound nostalgia for a simpler era when the founders, ''Dave and Bill,'' could manage the company by just ''walking around.'' — Diana B. Henriques