Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Enrique Lores
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: The granddaddy of all Silicon Valley startups is Hewlett Packard.
- 0:05Speaker 1: It would start in a garage in nineteen thirty nine,
- 0:08Speaker 1: but in twenty fifteen it's split into two separate companies,
- 0:11Speaker 1: Heulett Packard Enterprises and HP Inc. Recently, at the Economic
- 0:15Speaker 1: Club of Washington, I sat down with Enrique Loris to
- 0:18Speaker 1: talk about how he's led the successful personal computer and
- 0:21Speaker 1: printing company following the split. So which company is better,
- 0:30Speaker 1: Hewlett Packard Enterprises or HP Inc.
- 0:34Speaker 2: So, as you can imagine, I have a very unbiassed view,
- 0:38Speaker 2: and I have say, of course, HP Inc. Is not
- 0:41Speaker 2: only that we do printers and PCs.
- 0:44Speaker 3: We think we.
- 0:45Speaker 2: Are the company that can enable a more flexible way
- 0:48Speaker 2: of working, to make employees productive, to make employees engaged,
- 0:52Speaker 2: and this is what we stand for.
- 0:54Speaker 1: So, but their main business is today is computers and
- 1:00Speaker 1: so much and printers that their main businesses. Right, So
- 1:03Speaker 1: I can tell from your accent you're not from Baltimore
- 1:06Speaker 1: or Washington, DCA.
- 1:08Speaker 4: Where did you grow up?
- 1:10Speaker 3: I can't say you're very astute.
- 1:12Speaker 2: So you're really detecting that I'm not from the US
- 1:15Speaker 2: is very difficult, I know.
- 1:17Speaker 3: But yeah, originally from Spain.
- 1:19Speaker 4: I okay, so you grew up in Spain.
- 1:21Speaker 3: I grew up in Spain.
- 1:22Speaker 1: Now, how many companies in Silicon Valley are run by
- 1:26Speaker 1: people who were born in Spain?
- 1:28Speaker 4: One one? So all right, so you're born in Spain.
- 1:32Speaker 1: Did you say I want to run HP someday or
- 1:34Speaker 1: what it was your aspiration as a young boy in Spain.
- 1:37Speaker 2: No, it was not my inspiration to tufront a company
- 1:40Speaker 2: like HP. I joined HP as an intern in nineteen
- 1:44Speaker 2: eighty nine, so I have worked for the company for
- 1:47Speaker 2: a very long time. When I was studying, there was
- 1:50Speaker 2: a group of HP engineers that came to my university
- 1:53Speaker 2: in Spain, in Valencia, and they explain what it took
- 1:57Speaker 2: to develop a printer, was where it was when printers
- 1:59Speaker 2: were starting to be created, and I was amazed by
- 2:03Speaker 2: both the technology complexity but also by the passion these
- 2:06Speaker 2: people showed about the printer, And in fact, I was thinking,
- 2:09Speaker 2: how can someone feel passion for something so strange.
- 2:14Speaker 3: I have to say though, that thirty.
- 2:16Speaker 2: Four years later, I have more passion for printers than
- 2:19Speaker 2: these people had. So I have learned and I have
- 2:22Speaker 2: been converted to the religion.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Okay, so you went to college in Spain and you
- 2:26Speaker 1: got an MBA or an engineering degree.
- 2:29Speaker 3: I got an engineering degree first.
- 2:31Speaker 1: Okay, so you're electrical engineer. You moved to Slicon Valley.
- 2:35Speaker 1: Where'd you move to?
- 2:36Speaker 3: No?
- 2:36Speaker 2: Actually, the full story was I got this opportunity to
- 2:40Speaker 2: work as an interne in HP, and it was I
- 2:43Speaker 2: had the opportunity to go to San Diego. So we
- 2:46Speaker 2: went to San Diego for the summer, and when the
- 2:49Speaker 2: internship was finishing, HP was opening an Rande Center in
- 2:53Speaker 2: Spain in Barcelona. So they told me, you're from Spain,
- 2:56Speaker 2: we are creating this new Errandi center you might be
- 2:59Speaker 2: interested in And I said that at point, yea, maybe
- 3:03Speaker 2: for a couple of years, because we were living a
- 3:05Speaker 2: different city, and in Spain you don't change cities.
- 3:08Speaker 3: You grew up in.
- 3:09Speaker 2: You are born in one place, you go to school
- 3:11Speaker 2: in one place, and you build you live all your
- 3:13Speaker 2: life there. So we said, oh, for a couple of years,
- 3:16Speaker 2: would be nice to go to Barcelona. Thirty five years
- 3:19Speaker 2: later we never came back. We went to Barcelona. Sometime
- 3:23Speaker 2: later we came to the US and here.
- 3:25Speaker 1: We How long did it take after the split occurred
- 3:27Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen for you to become the CEO.
- 3:29Speaker 4: What were you doing before he became COO?
- 3:32Speaker 2: Before I became CEO, I led the separation of the company.
- 3:36Speaker 2: So when Meg, or the CEO, decided to split the company,
- 3:40Speaker 2: we created what we called a separation office and there
- 3:43Speaker 2: were two leaders, one from HPE and the other one
- 3:46Speaker 2: for Hilopap Enterprise, one for HPING.
- 3:48Speaker 3: I led a separation from my side.
- 3:51Speaker 2: In fact, when I was asked to lead a separation,
- 3:55Speaker 2: my immediate response was no, I don't want to do that.
- 3:58Speaker 2: And then Meg, that was make Witnan, that was a
- 4:00Speaker 2: CEO at that point. After a few days, a weekend,
- 4:03Speaker 2: she called me home and said, and Rica, I need
- 4:05Speaker 2: to talk to you. So I went to her home
- 4:07Speaker 2: and she said, I know you don't want to do that.
- 4:10Speaker 2: This is the opportunity of your career. You're going to
- 4:13Speaker 2: learn things you will never forget. You should be taking
- 4:16Speaker 2: different and when the CEO calls you to her home
- 4:19Speaker 2: on a weekend, you know that is only one answer. Okay,
- 4:22Speaker 2: it was yes, I will do it. And I have
- 4:25Speaker 2: to say I learned a lot.
- 4:27Speaker 1: So what was the theory, the business theory behind why
- 4:30Speaker 1: sputting up Hulett Packard a very successful company in the
- 4:33Speaker 1: two separate companies.
- 4:34Speaker 4: Why was that going to be such a great idea?
- 4:36Speaker 2: I think the main theory, which at least in our case,
- 4:40Speaker 2: have proven to be true, was focus.
- 4:43Speaker 3: HP was a very big company.
- 4:45Speaker 2: We were selling from printers to service data centers, all
- 4:49Speaker 2: sorts of technology products, and the theory that the board
- 4:52Speaker 2: had at that point was that focus was very important.
- 4:55Speaker 2: Each market was moving in a different direction, we were
- 4:58Speaker 2: competing with different companies, so being focus, being able to
- 5:01Speaker 2: invest in our segments was the critical thing, and in
- 5:04Speaker 2: our case has proven to be right.
- 5:05Speaker 1: So when a company is split occurr in twenty fifteen,
- 5:09Speaker 1: many people thought that Hewlett Packard Enterprises, which was in
- 5:12Speaker 1: the sexual area of software and services, would.
- 5:15Speaker 4: Become more valuable.
- 5:17Speaker 1: But actually your company is now has a higher market
- 5:19Speaker 1: capitalisation than Helot Packard Enterprises.
- 5:22Speaker 4: Is that make you sad or happy?
- 5:25Speaker 2: I only I'm only concerned about what happens with our company.
- 5:30Speaker 2: And as I said, the separation has been good for us.
- 5:34Speaker 2: We have proven that we can create value to two shareholders.
- 5:38Speaker 2: Our ts are in the last seven years has been
- 5:41Speaker 2: two hundred percent, significantly higher than the average of the market.
- 5:45Speaker 2: So we have done well and what is more important.
- 5:48Speaker 2: We have a lot of opportunities and ideas of how
- 5:51Speaker 2: to continue to make the company better.
- 5:53Speaker 1: You compete against I guess Dell and Lenovo and also Apple.
- 5:58Speaker 1: I assume which of your which o those companies makes
- 6:02Speaker 1: the best personal computer? What you say really and is
- 6:06Speaker 1: what makes your computer better? Why should I want to
- 6:08Speaker 1: buy yours over somebody else? Aren't they all really pretty
- 6:10Speaker 1: much the same? At this point?
- 6:12Speaker 2: I think there are three big differentiations for our products,
- 6:16Speaker 2: especially in the piece space.
- 6:18Speaker 3: One is security.
- 6:20Speaker 2: Cyber security is every time more important, and we build
- 6:23Speaker 2: both software and hardware in our PCs to make them
- 6:27Speaker 2: more secure. Second big differentiation is industrial design. We have
- 6:33Speaker 2: made a big effort to make our preces the best
- 6:36Speaker 2: looking pieces, the most attractive, and the ones that have
- 6:39Speaker 2: the better use model. And finally is sustainability. We think
- 6:44Speaker 2: that sustainability is really important and we use in our
- 6:47Speaker 2: PCs all type of materials that are environmentally friendly, from
- 6:52Speaker 2: plastic that we get from the oceans, to coffee beans
- 6:56Speaker 2: to You can look at our portfolio and see any.
- 6:58Speaker 1: Type of matiityre do you sell them? And you don't
- 7:01Speaker 1: have HP stores the way Apple has stores, So where
- 7:03Speaker 1: do you sell your computers.
- 7:05Speaker 2: It actually depends country by country. In the US, for example,
- 7:08Speaker 2: we sell online on HP dot com or on Amazon.
- 7:12Speaker 2: You can buy our products in any large consumer electronics
- 7:16Speaker 2: retailer like Best Buy. But also for commercial customers, we
- 7:20Speaker 2: have a big network of free sellers, commercial resellers that
- 7:24Speaker 2: will sell our product and for our top customers, we
- 7:27Speaker 2: have a dairy Excel force. In other countries, we have
- 7:30Speaker 2: our own stores you do. For example, in India, we have
- 7:33Speaker 2: more than five hundred stores that really we use.
- 7:37Speaker 4: India rate five hundred stores and the US rates non.
- 7:40Speaker 2: Because of the structure of the distribution and retail model
- 7:44Speaker 2: in India, there is not an electronic retail network in
- 7:48Speaker 2: many of the cities, so we had to build our
- 7:50Speaker 2: own to be able to really reach consumers anywhere in
- 7:53Speaker 2: the country. And we continue to expand because we see
- 7:56Speaker 2: continue to see a big opportunity.
- 7:58Speaker 1: So pose I buy one of your computers and then you, lady,
- 8:01Speaker 1: you have another model. Can I trade it in and
- 8:03Speaker 1: get a discount Like a car, I can trade them
- 8:05Speaker 1: when I buy a new car.
- 8:06Speaker 4: Don't you don't have trade ends or anything.
- 8:08Speaker 3: Like that today today we don't.
- 8:10Speaker 2: But this is one of the businesses that we're starting
- 8:13Speaker 2: to develop, both because we see we can really help
- 8:17Speaker 2: customers to always stay on the latest technology, but also
- 8:21Speaker 2: because from a sustainability perspective, recycling and refurbishing is a
- 8:25Speaker 2: very important thing to do. So we are going to
- 8:27Speaker 2: be building that model at scale.
- 8:29Speaker 4: Right, So where are your computers manufactured today?
- 8:33Speaker 3: Majority are still produced in China.
- 8:35Speaker 4: China?
- 8:36Speaker 1: And are you worried about somebody putting a chip in
- 8:38Speaker 1: the air that can enable the Chinese government to listen
- 8:40Speaker 1: to what you're doing?
- 8:41Speaker 4: Is you're worried about that? Or should I worry about that?
- 8:44Speaker 2: You should not worry about that, because we worry about that, okay.
- 8:47Speaker 3: And what we.
- 8:47Speaker 2: Have built is what we call a secure supply chain
- 8:50Speaker 2: through so across every step of the manufacturing process, we
- 8:55Speaker 2: control anything that is inside of our printers, inside the chiefs,
- 8:59Speaker 2: inside the sover to make sure that the printers, the
- 9:02Speaker 2: PCs are the printers as we are.
- 9:03Speaker 1: You're worried about being too dependent on China for your
- 9:06Speaker 1: manufacturing because there could be us problems with China.
- 9:09Speaker 4: Who knows what can happen? Why not diversify?
- 9:12Speaker 2: Actually we are diversifying. We realized and learned painfully during
- 9:17Speaker 2: Covid as many other companies, that depending on a specific
- 9:22Speaker 2: territory or having too much dependency was too risky, and
- 9:26Speaker 2: that the what we had done over many years of
- 9:30Speaker 2: really pushing for a cost and therefore concentrated non manufacturing
- 9:34Speaker 2: in one place created some the issues from a resiliency perspective.
- 9:39Speaker 2: So since then we have been diversifying to increase resiliency.
- 9:43Speaker 2: And this is a process that we embarked a few
- 9:46Speaker 2: years ago that is going to take some time, but
- 9:47Speaker 2: clearly we are doing that.
- 9:49Speaker 1: But the key is the semiconductors of the chips and
- 9:52Speaker 1: where are the chips made in China or the made
- 9:54Speaker 1: in Taiwan or US.
- 9:55Speaker 2: Or majority today are still built in Taiwan. We are
- 9:59Speaker 2: working with all the key chip providers to make sure
- 10:02Speaker 2: we diversify with the location. And this is why, for example,
- 10:06Speaker 2: last year we were very supportive of the Chips Act
- 10:08Speaker 2: because getting government funds to accelerate the change, we think
- 10:13Speaker 2: is very important.
- 10:13Speaker 1: So when you're at your home and you're working on
- 10:16Speaker 1: a computer, do you ever use the opposition or the
- 10:18Speaker 1: competitors to see what they're doing or you only can
- 10:20Speaker 1: use HP.
- 10:22Speaker 2: I use both, as you can guess I have lots
- 10:25Speaker 2: of hppcs at home because every time there is something new,
- 10:28Speaker 2: the team was me to train and sometimes they don't
- 10:33Speaker 2: like it because I find things they didn't like me
- 10:35Speaker 2: to find. So I give a lot of feedback, but
- 10:38Speaker 2: of course I test also the latest innovation from our
- 10:41Speaker 2: competitors to make sure I understand.
- 10:43Speaker 1: You work at your competitors computers and say why don't
- 10:46Speaker 1: we have this?
- 10:47Speaker 4: And can't we don't have that?
- 10:48Speaker 3: You ever ask yes, and the team hated it?
- 10:52Speaker 1: And how do you protect against hacking? And how do
- 10:55Speaker 1: you kind of give your people who are customers warning
- 10:58Speaker 1: about what they're going to say if a hacker is
- 11:00Speaker 1: coming in.
- 11:02Speaker 3: What we have done is we.
- 11:04Speaker 2: Have developed both software and hardware to protect our pieces.
- 11:09Speaker 2: For example, in any of our commercial pieces, we have
- 11:12Speaker 2: achieved embedded in the board that detects if the BIOS
- 11:17Speaker 2: has been modified. The BIOS is kind of the brain
- 11:19Speaker 2: of the PC, so we can detect if there has
- 11:22Speaker 2: been any intrusion in the BIOS and if we detect that,
- 11:25Speaker 2: we can restore it to the regional level. This is
- 11:27Speaker 2: a unique technology that HP has that really helps to
- 11:31Speaker 2: protect our pieces, and we have many other software developments
- 11:35Speaker 2: in other layers to do similar things.
- 11:37Speaker 4: You make servers as well, No, we only do pieces.
- 11:40Speaker 2: We do workstations, which is a very high end type
- 11:42Speaker 2: of PC, but we don't do servers.
- 11:44Speaker 1: You make cartridges, right, and the printers. So on printers,
- 11:50Speaker 1: it's one printer really different than another from your competitors.
- 11:53Speaker 1: Aren't all the printers pretty much the same?
- 11:56Speaker 3: Printers are fairly different.
- 11:58Speaker 2: In fact, there is more difference print to printer than
- 12:00Speaker 2: PC to PC because printers are a totally integrated business.
- 12:04Speaker 2: So we develop the printer, we develop the ink, we
- 12:07Speaker 2: develop the cartridge. Is a much more vertically integrated model
- 12:11Speaker 2: that dries more differentiation.
- 12:13Speaker 1: Is the printing business a growth business because people now
- 12:16Speaker 1: printing stuff as much, they're just sending it by email
- 12:19Speaker 1: or computer digital means to other people. So is printing
- 12:22Speaker 1: a growth business or it's kind of a shrinking business.
- 12:25Speaker 3: In printing, there are three very different segments.
- 12:28Speaker 2: There is what we call home printing, so printers you
- 12:31Speaker 2: will buy to use at home, to print photos or
- 12:34Speaker 2: to print email. This is clearly a not growing business.
- 12:37Speaker 2: Then we have an office segment people copiers printers that
- 12:41Speaker 2: you will do in the you will use in the office.
- 12:43Speaker 2: That's a market that is table is declining in more
- 12:46Speaker 2: developed countries, is growing in emerging countries. And then we
- 12:50Speaker 2: have a third segment, which is industrial printing. Industrial printing
- 12:54Speaker 2: means printing labels, packaging, this type of and this is
- 12:59Speaker 2: a significantly go.
- 13:00Speaker 1: I actually do have an HP printery good, but the
- 13:04Speaker 1: cartridge is always running out. I'm running out of ink
- 13:06Speaker 1: all the time. So is that a problem? How do
- 13:10Speaker 1: I how do I know where my ink is going
- 13:13Speaker 1: to be out and right in the middle of printing something.
- 13:15Speaker 1: Is that a big problem that you guys have, which
- 13:18Speaker 1: I do about it.
- 13:19Speaker 2: When we talk to customers, they always have two concerns
- 13:23Speaker 2: about printing. One is what Jja said, I want to
- 13:26Speaker 2: print my kid has finished homework. I need to print homework.
- 13:30Speaker 2: The print is not working because the cartridge is not working.
- 13:33Speaker 2: Second complaint that we have is printing is expensive. I
- 13:37Speaker 2: really hate paying fifty dollars forty five dollars fifty five
- 13:40Speaker 2: dollars for the cartridge. And we have a solution for that.
- 13:44Speaker 2: We have created a subscription model where we monitor the
- 13:48Speaker 2: amount of ink that is being used in the printer.
- 13:50Speaker 2: Customers pays for the number of pages the print per
- 13:53Speaker 2: month and before the printer runs out of ink, we
- 13:56Speaker 2: send a new cartridge to customers and by doing that,
- 14:00Speaker 2: depending on your volume, you can save up to seventy
- 14:03Speaker 2: percent of I mean, you print seventy percent cheaper.
- 14:07Speaker 4: What are you doing about carbon and your global footprint?
- 14:10Speaker 2: We have an aggressive plan to reduce that to be
- 14:12Speaker 2: carborn by twenty thirty and we are working in the
- 14:16Speaker 2: areas of the company where we have more impact. Because
- 14:19Speaker 2: of the products that we build, we use alls of plastic,
- 14:22Speaker 2: so we have an important initiative to use a recycled
- 14:26Speaker 2: plastic in any of our products. We are also I
- 14:30Speaker 2: mentioned before, we are going to be changing business models
- 14:33Speaker 2: to move into referbised products.
- 14:36Speaker 3: So we live, we give to our products toward the lives.
- 14:40Speaker 2: And finally, and one of the things that I feel
- 14:42Speaker 2: most proud of in this space is people always associates
- 14:46Speaker 2: printing with paper, paper with trees, and therefore, if you print,
- 14:51Speaker 2: you're doing something wrong for the environment. So what we
- 14:55Speaker 2: have is an initiative that we call forest positive printing.
- 14:59Speaker 2: So we look at the amount of print paper that
- 15:01Speaker 2: is used in our printers, if that paper is not
- 15:04Speaker 2: coming from recyclable forests, for forests that have been planted
- 15:08Speaker 2: to create paper. We plant trees and we have programs
- 15:11Speaker 2: of reforestation to compensate for that.
- 15:14Speaker 1: Silicon Valley companies are not famous for diversity, So what
- 15:19Speaker 1: do you do.
- 15:19Speaker 4: In that regard?
- 15:20Speaker 1: You have a program that I'm sure you have some
- 15:22Speaker 1: fair amount of diversity.
- 15:23Speaker 3: We take it.
- 15:24Speaker 2: Extremely seriously and for example, my compensation and the compensation
- 15:28Speaker 2: of my direct team is dependent on the progress that
- 15:32Speaker 2: we make on diversity.
- 15:33Speaker 1: Also, I want to buy a computer, but I want
- 15:35Speaker 1: I want to have AI in my computer. I want
- 15:37Speaker 1: to be really up to date. Do you have AI
- 15:40Speaker 1: and your computers yet?
- 15:42Speaker 2: Not yet, but it is coming soon and we think
- 15:45Speaker 2: this is going to be one of the largest transformations
- 15:48Speaker 2: in the PC industry in decades. What will be possible
- 15:53Speaker 2: starting this summer is to run large language models in AIPCS,
- 15:59Speaker 2: which means that what today all of us are doing
- 16:02Speaker 2: in the cloud, where you use any of the applications
- 16:05Speaker 2: that you can, you will be able to do it locally.
- 16:08Speaker 2: And what this means, which is why we think this
- 16:10Speaker 2: is important, is it will be much better from a
- 16:13Speaker 2: cost perspective, because running models in the cloud is expensive.
- 16:17Speaker 2: It will be better from a security perspective because you
- 16:20Speaker 2: will be able to use the model with your own
- 16:23Speaker 2: data locally without having to upload your data to the cloud,
- 16:26Speaker 2: and you will be able to do it anywhere in
- 16:29Speaker 2: the world. And also for applications where speed is important,
- 16:32Speaker 2: where latency is important, you will be able to do
- 16:35Speaker 2: it locally much faster. For example, in gaming, where you
- 16:38Speaker 2: are where the game needs any resource the computer have,
- 16:42Speaker 2: it will be a much better model. So it's going
- 16:43Speaker 2: to be a big change starting this summer at the
- 16:46Speaker 2: same price too, slightly higher price, but if we look
- 16:50Speaker 2: at the increase of price versus the increase of value,
- 16:53Speaker 2: not comparable.
- 16:54Speaker 4: With one of your competitors.
- 16:55Speaker 1: Apple has recently come out with a product that is
- 16:58Speaker 1: they called spatial computer.
- 17:00Speaker 2: It's like a virtual reality. Do you have that kind
- 17:02Speaker 2: of product yet, And we have had a similar product
- 17:06Speaker 2: for some time. Focus on two spaces. One was gaming,
- 17:10Speaker 2: one was in some commercial usance. And we think that
- 17:13Speaker 2: over time this category is going to grow. But what
- 17:17Speaker 2: we really think is that computing is going to become
- 17:20Speaker 2: we call it immersive. That today we interact with computers
- 17:24Speaker 2: through a screen or through a keyboard, more and more
- 17:26Speaker 2: we are going to interact with our full body, with
- 17:29Speaker 2: our gestures, with and this is the trend that we
- 17:32Speaker 2: are we are pushing for. You will see this in
- 17:36Speaker 2: some models like what Apple has done. There are also
- 17:39Speaker 2: very interesting concepts where you interact with holograms and we
- 17:42Speaker 2: are really exploring a multitude of different things which one
- 17:46Speaker 2: will win. At this point it is difficult to see,
- 17:48Speaker 2: but clearly immersive is the future.
- 17:50Speaker 1: Or somebody comes and says, look, I don't really care
- 17:52Speaker 1: about price. I'm not price sensitive. Sell me whatever you got,
- 17:55Speaker 1: give me your best stuff. I mean, what's somebody going
- 17:57Speaker 1: to spend that five thousand dollars or something for.
- 17:59Speaker 2: A con five thousand dollars? So we have products at
- 18:02Speaker 2: five thousand dollars for a business customer. If you want
- 18:06Speaker 2: to buy the top of the line workstation with the
- 18:09Speaker 2: top of the line processor ten fifteen thousand dollars.
- 18:14Speaker 4: Wow.
- 18:14Speaker 1: So if somebody goes into your stores in India and
- 18:16Speaker 1: they spent five thousand for a personal computer, that they
- 18:19Speaker 1: call you up and side. We just sold somebody a
- 18:21Speaker 1: five thousand dollars personal computer. They don't call you about
- 18:23Speaker 1: that since you mentioned it.
- 18:24Speaker 2: This summer we were in India, so I decided to
- 18:28Speaker 2: go to some of our stores without telling them who
- 18:30Speaker 2: I was, so you should see the faces.
- 18:32Speaker 3: When I went to the store, they look at me.
- 18:35Speaker 2: I asked them about what products they were selling, and
- 18:38Speaker 2: at some point I said, well, you know, I'm the
- 18:39Speaker 2: sea of the company, and they became white.
- 18:44Speaker 3: First war Like they didn't believe it.
- 18:46Speaker 4: They didn't believe it, or after a while.
- 18:48Speaker 3: They believed it, but some of them look at the
- 18:50Speaker 3: web to make sure it was me.
- 18:52Speaker 1: Okay, why should somebody want to join Hula Packard as
- 18:55Speaker 1: an employee? Why is it better than working at Apple
- 18:58Speaker 1: or one of the other competitors that you might have.
- 19:00Speaker 2: So when when Ivy CEO, we define four objectives for
- 19:05Speaker 2: the company and one of the four objectives is to
- 19:09Speaker 2: become a school of talent. And our value proposition to
- 19:13Speaker 2: employees is that they can join the company, they will
- 19:16Speaker 2: learn their job, they will be able to experience multiple businesses,
- 19:21Speaker 2: multiple functions if they want. They can live in multiple
- 19:24Speaker 2: countries just because of the presence that we have. So
- 19:27Speaker 2: we really focus on employee development as the key value proposition,
- 19:31Speaker 2: to the point that we say when someone leaves, we
- 19:34Speaker 2: celebrate the graduation because really that person has learned from
- 19:39Speaker 2: us and has developed. And this also gives us opportunity
- 19:42Speaker 2: to bring someone new, to bring someone younger, to continue
- 19:44Speaker 2: to reference.
- 19:45Speaker 3: So that's one of the key values that we have.
- 19:48Speaker 1: So if somebody wants to work at a company like yours,
- 19:51Speaker 1: what's the best way to get a job? You get
- 19:53Speaker 1: an engineering degree from a good school or not a
- 19:56Speaker 1: good school. Is being an engineer is the best way?
- 19:58Speaker 2: I think there are multiple Always clearly there are a
- 20:02Speaker 2: lot of engineers in the company, So studying engineering and
- 20:06Speaker 2: graduating from a good school is important. But we hire
- 20:10Speaker 2: people that graduate from marketing. We graduate people from law schools.
- 20:14Speaker 2: I mean, we are a very large company that has
- 20:17Speaker 2: any function that you can think of in the company,
- 20:20Speaker 2: So we have lots of people.
- 20:21Speaker 1: The average person you hire do'es he or she lasts
- 20:25Speaker 1: one year or two years, five years?
- 20:26Speaker 4: How long are your average people?
- 20:28Speaker 3: In general?
- 20:29Speaker 2: We are a company with long tenure. I mean I
- 20:32Speaker 2: said before I've been more than thirty four years in
- 20:34Speaker 2: the company. You will find people that has been the
- 20:37Speaker 2: company for a long time.
- 20:38Speaker 1: Would you say that the computing business is one that
- 20:41Speaker 1: is likely to increase in value? Is more companies come in,
- 20:46Speaker 1: or computers become more sophisticated, or you think it's pretty
- 20:49Speaker 1: much a solid business, but not going to be a
- 20:52Speaker 1: high growth business.
- 20:54Speaker 3: It depends on what you mean by high growth.
- 20:56Speaker 2: Is a business that we think is going to grow
- 20:58Speaker 2: between two and four percent, but it is a four
- 21:00Speaker 2: hundred billion dollar business, so twocent of four hundred billion
- 21:04Speaker 2: is a lot of additional business every year in.
- 21:06Speaker 1: Your business today, would you say that your biggest problem
- 21:10Speaker 1: is what your biggest concern is? Competition, government, regulation, the economy.
- 21:16Speaker 4: What is your biggest concern?
- 21:18Speaker 2: I think one is all the geopolitical changes that we
- 21:22Speaker 2: are seeing. I think one we have had a very
- 21:25Speaker 2: stable environment for the last twenty years. It was very
- 21:28Speaker 2: clear how to manage the company to be successful. Things
- 21:32Speaker 2: have changed extremely fast and this is having significant impact
- 21:37Speaker 2: on our business. And the second is to make sure
- 21:40Speaker 2: that we stay in the lead. From an innovation perspective.
- 21:44Speaker 2: The pace where that technology is changing by is faster
- 21:49Speaker 2: than ever, so making sure that we are making the
- 21:52Speaker 2: right technology beds, that we hire the right people to
- 21:55Speaker 2: develop those technologies.
- 21:57Speaker 3: That's one of the challenges.
- 21:58Speaker 1: And today you get a lot of people coming to
- 22:01Speaker 1: here with great ideas what new businesses you should be in,
- 22:04Speaker 1: or you generate your own ideas of new businesses that
- 22:07Speaker 1: can expand your business space is both.
- 22:10Speaker 2: We have teams in the company that are constantly exploring
- 22:14Speaker 2: new ideas, but we also have a small venture fund
- 22:20Speaker 2: that looks what is being invented, what is being created
- 22:23Speaker 2: in startups, and then.
- 22:25Speaker 3: We invest on those.
- 22:27Speaker 2: The innovation model has changed a lot in the last
- 22:30Speaker 2: thirty years. Thirty years ago, companies like US used to
- 22:34Speaker 2: have big central labs that were the ones creating new things.
- 22:38Speaker 2: The model is way more decentralized today and the combination
- 22:42Speaker 2: of university startups.
- 22:44Speaker 3: Is really now driving the innovation.
- 22:46Speaker 2: So we need to be much more external focused than
- 22:48Speaker 2: we were before to continue to stay on the lead.
- 22:51Speaker 1: So what is the most important message you would like
- 22:54Speaker 1: to convey anybody watching here today about the personal computer
- 22:59Speaker 1: world is that it's a great thing for society and
- 23:02Speaker 1: that they should buy more personal computers. And what is
- 23:05Speaker 1: the most important thing you want to convey about HPA inc.
- 23:08Speaker 2: About HPS that is a company that really cares about
- 23:14Speaker 2: helping society. That we have a big opportunity to enable
- 23:19Speaker 2: our employees to be more productive, to be more engaged,
- 23:23Speaker 2: and that we see a lot of opportunities to innovate
- 23:26Speaker 2: to make it happen. And also that is a company
- 23:29Speaker 2: with very strong values and strong principles. Since the company
- 23:33Speaker 2: was funded in nineteen thirty eight, the Villa, and they've
- 23:36Speaker 2: defined before all the conversation about sustainability or diversity even existed.
- 23:43Speaker 2: They define the values of the company. They define that
- 23:46Speaker 2: the company. Great companies create a lot of value for shareholders,
- 23:51Speaker 2: but also have a positive impact for our communities.
- 23:54Speaker 3: And since then we have been driving both.
- 23:57Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
- 23:59Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
- 24:03Speaker 1: wherever you listen.