Whitman pledges more R&D investment

Acquisition frenzy has seen HP lose focus on organic innovation, new boss admits to partners

HP boss Meg Whitman has pledged to “double down” on organic research and development (R&D) in an acknowledgement the vendor has lost its reputation for home-grown innovation in recent years.

HP’s investment in R&D as a percentage of sales more than halved during the naughties as the vendor turned its attention to acquisitive growth.

Without giving specific figures, Whitman said HP would “double down spend” in all of its divisions and admitted HP Labs had been underutilised in the last few years.

“We will continue to do acquisitions because there will always be interesting young companies that can benefit from HP’s scale,” she said. “But we have to do a better job of organic innovation. I want to bring HP Labs closer to the business units so we can get from an incredible idea to commercialisation faster. I want HP Labs to become a little more commercial.”

Whitman’s closing keynote at HP’s Global Partner Conference was not short of crowd-pleasers, but her R&D pledge elicited one of the most vigorous rounds of applause from the 2,000 partners that had made the trip to Las Vegas.

“I believe if we do not invest in revolutionary and evolutionary technology we aren’t doing our job to make you successful,” Whitman said.