.
In 1943, HP entered the microwave field with signal generators developed for the Naval Research Laboratory and a radar-jamming device. At the end of the war, HP made the critical decision to continue in the microwave field; this area quickly became an important and growing share of the company's business, with HP the acknowledged leader in signal generators.
HP was incorporated on August 18, 1947. Dave was named president, and Bill was named vice president. Soon after, HP adopted an insured pension plan for all employees with a minimum of five years service. .
The company went public in 1957. In keeping with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's respect for workers, HP took the then-unusual step of giving stock grants to employees. In the company's first off-site meeting of senior managers, the HP corporate objectives were written. In keeping with the company's practice of management by objective, the purpose of these objectives was to serve as a day-to-day guide for management decision-making in a rapidly growing company. "We thought that if we could get everybody to agree on what our objectives were and to understand what we were trying to do, then we could turn them loose and they would move in a common direction," Dave said about the meeting. The objectives cover seven points: profit, customers, fields of interest, growth, our people, management and citizenship. These management philosophies, which were radically different from the top-down management style of many companies at the time, served as the basis of HP's management style, which comes to be known as the "HP Way.".
As HP made corporate acquisitions, they established a division structure so that its growing size did not result in a loss of flexibility. Each product group became a self-sustaining organization responsible for developing, manufacturing and marketing its own products. Any HP group that grew to 1,500 people was divided with the resulting group having their own profit-and-loss accountability.
