Innovation, the popular mantra of the day, is more elusive and ephemeral than the current spate of books would have it. Chuck House has just completed research for a forthcoming book — The HP Phenomenon — that examines closely the consistent innovation patterns of the world's largest high-tech firm, and comes to some surprising conclusions for how it has been able to transition itself time and again into new arenas, and outperforming its chief competitors time after time. The lessons from this study, applied in succinct form against Silicon Valley conventional wisdom, are suggestive for 21st century corporations and innovation in the evolving outsourced, downsized, offshored world that has been enabled by the rapid adoption and increasing capability of the WWW.
Chuck House, Executive Director of Media X at Stanford University, brings a long history of innovation with him to this role. Participant in creating twelve product lines at HP over a thirty-year career and leader of the Intel Research Collaboratory before joining Stanford, he has also been an advisor with 25 start-up companies. Holder of HP's Medal of Defiance as well as the named Chuck House Productivity Award, he has been cited by Smithsonian and the Computer History Museum as one of the top 200 Computer Wizards of America. House was ACM President from 1996-1998, chairing ACM '01 in San Jose with Bob Metcalfe in 2001.