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 attempt to encapsulate the work ethos that Bill Hewlett and David Packard set when they founded Hewlett-Packard. Since Hewlett-Packard was one of the earliest success stories of the information technology sector, it also used to more broadly describe the work ethos of Silicon Valley.

Etymology[edit]

The Rules were first articulated in 1999 by then HP CEO Carly Fiorina - during her tenure as then HP CEO - and they were later used in a Hewlett-Packard ad campaign.[1] 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.[2]

The Eleven "Rules of the Garage"[edit]

The eleven rules are:[1]

  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.

See also Wikipedia discussion of HP culture

References[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to HP garage.
  1. ^ a b Abell, John C (January 3, 2009). "Rules of the Garage, And Then Some". Wired. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  2. ^ 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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rules_of_the_garage&oldid=1154421046"