HP’s CEO Hire From Outside IT Industry Is Smart Move, Could Bring ‘New Insights’: Partners

The appointment of Emma Walmsley, former CEO of biopharmaceutical firm GSK, as the incoming chief executive at HP Inc. could be just what the PC giant needs to ‘initiate a breakthrough,’ an executive at a top HP partner tells CRN.

HP Inc.’s appointment of a prominent executive from outside the IT industry, Emma Walmsley, to serve as its incoming CEO could be crucial to bringing new perspectives and expanding opportunities at the PC and printer giant in the fast-changing AI era, solution provider executives told CRN.

The company announced Wednesday it has named Walmsley, former CEO of biopharmaceutical firm GSK, as its next chief executive, following a nine-month search. Walmsley will become CEO at HP Inc. effective Jan. 4, the company said.

While Walmsley has been involved with the tech industry as a board member at Microsoft for the past seven years, all her executive roles for the past 15 years have been at GSK, a Fortune 500 biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology firm. Earlier in her career, she had served in executive roles at cosmetics giant L’Oréal for 17 years.

Without a doubt, the appointment of an executive with a background leading companies outside IT represents a major shift in approach for HP, solution provider executives noted. HP’s most recent permanent CEO, Enrique Lores, had spent more than three decades at the company overall—starting out as an engineering intern at HP and rising to become CEO in 2019.

HP had been searching for a permanent CEO replacement since February, when Lores departed to become CEO of PayPal.

Still, the move by HP to bring Walmsley aboard could be positioned as a way to complement the vendor’s existing technical expertise with broader industry experience at the leadership level, according to solution provider executives.

“What do you want to do when you build a team? You look for complementary skills. You don’t need more of the same,” said Harry Zarek, president and CEO of Richmond Hill, Ontario-based Compugen, No. 68 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500.

“Sometimes, someone from the outside might be able to initiate a breakthrough,” Zarek said. “I look at this positively.”

Without question, there could be massive advantages in HP’s decision to look beyond the IT industry for its next chief executive, said Mike Turicchi, vice president for marketing and strategic relations at Manassas, Va.-based NCS Technologies.

The potential is for a leader with a complementary background to bring “new insights and a new outlook on some of the things that may have been challenging,” Turicchi said.

Ultimately, “I applaud that [HP is] doing something different. I like the risk that they’re taking by bringing an outsider in. I think it could be good for the company,” he said. “I’m optimistic.”

Walmsley began at GSK as president of the company’s consumer healthcare division in 2010, before moving up to CEO of the division in 2015 and then being named GSK’s CEO in April 2017.

Accomplishments during her tenure at GSK included leading “a significant transformation” of the company and improving the operating performance of the company, HP said in a news release Wednesday.

In particular, Walmsley oversaw the move to put a greater emphasis on specialty medicines and vaccines, as well as efforts to improve its R&D, according to HP’s announcement.

HP is positioning the hire of Walmsley as a key step in its effort to drive accelerated growth through the shift toward running AI on laptops and other PCs.

“HP has an extraordinary innovation heritage, an inspiring purpose and an incredible opportunity ahead as AI reshapes technology and what customers need from it,” Walmsley wrote in a LinkedIn post Wednesday.

HP’s existing foundation of technical expertise is a key reason to see the hiring of an outsider in a positive light, Compugen’s Zarek said.

“My view on HP is, you have such strong technical depth in so many areas,” he said. “The board probably thought about, where is the gap in our engagement in the market? And our growth opportunities—where are those? Where can those be highlighted, and how do we bring that in?”

Bringing in a high-level executive with a different background to pursue these objectives, therefore, is “certainly a major strategic move on [HP’s] part,” Zarek said.

Beyond the CEO appointment, solution provider executives said HP’s communication has remained a strength for the company as they continue to work through ongoing cost increases for memory and other components.

The relationship has continued to work well through the pricing challenges, which have been “surprisingly smooth,” Zarek said.

“There’s been very good, bidirectional channels of communication throughout the year on announcements of any changes of pricing,” he said.

At the same time, all signs point toward those challenges continuing through 2027 and into 2028, NCS Technologies’ Turicchi said—making HP’s efforts around effectively managing supply and pricing a pivotal issue for partners as Walmsley takes over.

“We’ll be watching HP’s ability to manage the supply chain and manage the price increases along the way,” he said.