Carly Fiorina - The Change Leader

Born in 1954, Fiorina was brought up in Austin, Texas (USA). Her father was a lawyer who also taught law at Stanford and other universities while her mother was a painter. Fiorina attended school in different parts of the world including Ghana, England, North Carolina and California...

During the late 1990s, HP faced major challenges in an increasingly competitive market. In fiscal 1998, while HP's revenues grew by just 3%, competitor Dell's rose by 38%. The company failed to capitalize on the PC and Internet boom and missed its target earnings forecasts in eight continuous quarters...

Before Fiorina came in, HP was a flat, decentralized organization where the individual departments were given a great deal of autonomy. Decisions were made either by consensus or never made. When Fiorina took charge, she developed a plan to transform HP from a 'strictly hardware company' to a 'Web services powerhouse.' As a part of the strategy, Fiorina dismantled the decentralized organization structure. In early 2000, HP had 83 independent product divisions, each focused on a product such as scanners or security software...