Rules of the garage

David Packard's garage in Palo Alto, in which Packard and Bill Hewlett first founded their company.

The rules of the garage are a set of eleven rules that Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina used in 1999 to reinterpret the HP Way work ethos that Bill Hewlett and David Packard set when they founded Hewlett-Packard (HP). Fiorina felt that the traditional HP Way was too limiting in the modern corporate world, and that it needed to be updated. ^[1]

Background

The rules were first articulated in 1999 by newly appointed HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and they were later used in a Hewlett-Packard ad campaign. ^[2] The name was a reference to David Packard's garage in Palo Alto, in which Packard and Bill Hewlett first founded the company after graduating from nearby Stanford University in 1935. ^[3]

The Eleven "Rules of the Garage"

The eleven rules are: ^[2]

1. Believe you can change the world.
2. Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
3. Know when to work alone and when to work together.
4. Share — tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
5. No Politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage.)
6. The customer defines a job well done.
7. Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
8. Invent different ways of working.
9. Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
10. Believe that together we can do anything.
11. Invent.

References

1. Johnson, Craig (November 2008). "The rise and fall of Carly Fiorina: an ethical case study" . Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies. 15 (2). SAGE Publications: 188–196. doi:10.1177/1548051808320983. S2CID   145194793.
2. Abell, John C (January 3, 2009). "Rules of the Garage, And Then Some". Wired. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
3. Malone, Michael S (2007). Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company . New York: Portfolio. pp.  39–41. ISBN   978-1-59184-152-4.