14 DAY TRIAL // "I would give us a good grade on improvement. I think we are better incrementally. I think we are still poor absolutely," Hurd said in an on-stage interview last week at Fortune magazine's annual technology conference in San Francisco and was cited by the news site zdnet.com. Mark Hurd joined the HP company over two years ago, coming from a small rival firm, NCR and was the driver behind the company's revival.
Hurd said that HP's long-term sales strategy is still one of modest growth. Hp is focused on expanding the number of 2000 global companies it serves with focused sales teams. One other point in Hurd's speech is that HP must find a better way to put its innovations into saleable products. The starting point of the HP research and development labs have been "Invent great stuff and customers will find it", while in Hurd's opinion the company will do much better if it sells its own inventions as finite products: "What I have tried to preach to the company is that if we actually try to sell (our innovations) we will actually do better."
About the scandal that shook the board of directors from HP over a year ago, leading to the resignation of chairwoman Patricia Dunn and the firing of several important executives, Hurd said that "as a board they were toxic" and that personal feelings were getting ahead of themselves: "It was a very, very personal issue among the board members. It was one of those things that didn't have much to do with the strategy of the company."
These scandals and boardroom battles led to the firing of Hurd's predecessor, Carly Fiorina in 2005. In 2006 over some press leaks, more of the original HP board of directors resigned. On the current situation of HP, Hurs was not overly joyed, as he said that no major deals are expected in the near future and that they still have "a ton to do".