Hewlett Packard is now run by a woman CEO, Carleton S. "Carly" Fiorina, who since she started 18 months ago, has "pushed the company to the limit to recapture the form that made it a management icon for six decades," says the article "The Radical: Carly Fiorina's Bold Management Experiment at HP." Before Fiorina came along, HP has a decentralized approach honed throughout HP's 64 year history. It was "a collection of 83 independently run units, each focused on a product such as scanners or security software." Also, before Fiorina arrived, "each product division has it's own financial reporting system.".
There were some problems caused by this old structure. In recent years under this old structure, HP has been said to be in a "slow-growth funk." By not changing much about the company in so long, growth has not changed much either. Another problem with HP is that is has made only "minor strides toward capturing lucrative business such as consulting services, storage, and software," which can make it hard to boost their market share.
Fiorina has mad a lot of changes in HP. As for the 83 independently run units, she has now collapsed them into four sprawling organizations. She is now going to attempt a front-back approach, which "requires laser focus and superb coordination." One of the back-end units will develop and build computers, and the other will focus on printers and imaging equipment. These back end divisions will give products to the front end sales and marketing groups who sell to customers and to corporations. Fiorina chose this program hoping it would "boost collaboration, giving sales and marketing execs a direct pipeline to engineers so products are developed from ground up to solve customer problems.".
Another change made by Fiorina is her so far three cross-company initiatives. One is a digital imaging effort to "make photos, drawings, and videos as easy to create, store, and send as e-mail.