Dear Carly, You Were Right

Stanford Business School has completed a research project into the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, and found that it did make sense after all:

Six years later, after (then-CEO Carly)Fiorina's acrimonious 2005 departure — which many attributed largely to the merger — and the promotion of former NCR head Mark Hurd to lead HP, the consensus is that the merger was indeed a good idea.

The change in attitude is due as much to Hurd's leadership as to the fact that the logic driving the merger was sound. "Public opinion about the merger has fluctuated over the years, but people don't talk about it anymore because its initial assumptions have been proven right, and because Mark Hurd is making it work," says Robert Burgelman, the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. With Webb McKinney, a former HP executive vice president who led HP's post-merger integration team, Burgelman analyzed the merger to distill important lessons for other managers.

"Ultimately, it turned out to be a good move," says Burgelman.

Whew.

Even more shocking than the fact that Stanford is disclosing that the deal was actually a good one is the fact that it happened six years ago. Where has the time gone?