HP sees profit in design

July 3, 2006 —

Over the next 18 months, Hewlett-Packard Co. will place increasing importance on product design as a way to gain more market share and to substantially cut product development and support costs.

The man leading these efforts is Sam Lucente, HP's vice president of design, a laid-back, soft-spoken guy with a ponytail. He joined HP three years ago after heading up his own design company and previous stints at Netscape and IBM Corp. where he was the lead designer on the vendor's ThinkPad 560 and 710 notebooks.

"The power of HP's portfolio is what really attracted me to the company," Lucente said. The vendor sells everything from consumer products such as digital cameras and televisions to high-end servers and storage used by businesses.

When he arrived at HP, Lucente discovered plenty of innovative design work going on, as befits a company whose tagline is "Invent." But it was mostly being done in isolation by individuals or small groups in their own cubicles. "People had no idea what those next to them were doing," he said.

While encountering some initial resistance, Lucente has worked at establishing a design practice within HP, where 200-plus designers can build on each other's discoveries and collaborate on technologies to benefit the entire company.

"HP has its roots as an engineering company, but as our products are commoditized, design plays a much bigger role," he said. "Three years ago it was an experiment, and now we see it driving a lot of profitability."

In the recent and not-so recent past, HP has been very inconsistent when it comes to product design, said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of research at IDC. What companies like Apple Computer Inc. have been very good at is "inviting the user in" with products that resemble each other and are operated in the same way.

For Lucente, design at HP has three main missions -- simplification, differentiation and innovation. He wants to create a single archetype for each HP product line, replacing a broad collection of parts with a single, consistent image.

"We

IDG News Service