Nature of Engagement:
Carol Sanford, while in graduate school, and later teaching, at San Jose State University, led a cross functional team for Hewlett Packard, (contracted by Barney Oliver, head of HP Labs). Her work there led to development of what she would later call, a “value-adding process” way of thinking. It led to improving the research, through engineering and then into production efficiency. It ensured market expansion of the HP 35, the first hand-held calculator. The project took place over two years, enabling the entire workforce from R&D, though engineering, and manufacturing, and into the market, to see their effect on one another and the consumer. It was credited with many upgrades and improvements in HP 35 to ensure the applications more needed by the customer were kept, and others edited out.
The education process was about how to image the working of a product in use, therefore grasping and essentializing the ideas about the product based on customer’s use. It also set the state for alignment of business for HP using the ideas of working back from the market and not out from the technology, which helped grow the company. Barney Oliver was also a stickler for precise language and was very engaged in learning system language process from Carol.
Results:
- Escalated the success of HP 35 into market with very limited bugs and rework.