Fitri Devita, 29115488

Managing Change at HP Lab: Perspective for Innovation, Knowledge Management, and

Becoming a Learning Organization
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to describe a process of change used in HP lab to transform it to
support knowledge management, innovation and becoming a learning organization. A major
focus of the study is to summarize key change processes and actions that helped transform HP
lab. The change process, along with actions taken at HP lab, will subsequently be discussed in
light of literature of change, culture, knowledge management and the learning organization
The Change Process
The HP labs primary role is finding, inventing and transferring technologies to maintain HPs
global competitiveness. In the lab there was almost no communication between scientists and
technical staffs, they worked in their esoteric functional silos with little collaboration
1. The implementation of dialogue process
In this process Director of HP lab and senior VP of R&D launched an organization-wide
dialogue where two key questions were asked here, first how far are we from being the
worlds best industrial research lab, second is what metric do we need to evaluate
ourselves?. Employees were also asked what the worlds best industrial research lab
precisely meant relative to their current job?
2. The creation of Support Function
In this function the HR manager role-modeled specific behavior congruent with creating
a learning organization culture. The key behavior were listening and questioning to
enable collective exploration between different suggestion and others similar or different
ideas, second is encouraging thinking-outside-the-box, third is encouraging risk-taking
and trying innovative ways of doing things
3. The emerge of communities of practice: networks for action taking
In this process HR managers supportive and facilitative behavior provided a fertile for
communities of practice to grow, 36 of informal group emerged to discuss specific issues
and transforming HP lab into worlds best industrial research lab.
The collaborated group resulted in forming self-development seminar program for secretaries in
order to improve the quality of work in HP lab, informal networks of employees focused on
measuring the outputs of the lab, during the second year the result were used to improve
knowledge access and transfer throughout the company

Sustaining Change
Several key factors sustained the change effort. One factor was that the emerging communities of
practice described above supported the emergence of new cultural norms. These emerging
cultural norms legitimized and empowered informal groups toward dialogue and action taking
during the second year of the process. This also built a growing atmosphere of excitement, trust
and openness among HP lab personnel also contributed to the changing norms.
The Impact of Change
Five significant organizational changes at HP lab:

From little collaborative work-to-work that has been rated as 30-40% collaboration
across technical functions
From primarily vertical communication with little lateral exchange of webs of
communication in all directions
From no consistent measures output across the various labs to robust measures that were
adopted across the HP lab organization
From no quality product to over 100 result-oriented programs targeting various
dimensions of quality, cost, and product and process innovation
From no vision for the labs to a unifying vision for the HP lab organization

Discussion
HP Lab tries to enable communication network for the communities of collaboration to emerge.
The collaboration across technical specialties and function is HP Labs is becoming one key
focuses shows the independency among the organization.
The launching of an organization-wide dialogue at HP Lab facilitates open forum for discussion,
questions, and answers, which enables learning from past success and failure. The change (the
dialogue process) facilitates the transformation of tacit, implicit knowledge into explicit
knowledge. As the result knowledge access and transfer throughout HP Lab is possible.
Top management support and leadership such as what HR manager did creates new cultural
norms. The initiation of dialogue process with two questions provided a forum to reassess and
align work at the Lab.
Management Innovation is applied during the change and the impact of HP Lab process. The
target of change of HP Lab and the change processes align with three of four of Hamels
prescription regarding: how to become a management innovator.
1) Commitment to big problem -> to be the best industrial research lab in the world
2) Search for new principle that illuminate new approaches-> the dialogue process that
asked employees what the worlds best industrial research lab precisely meant relative to
their current job through surveys, groupware, etc.

3) Deconstruction of management orthodox -> dialogue process and the support of HP

manager
HP Lab use process planned change in focusing on developing a knowledge-based, learning
organization. Planned change and organizational development were using process namely
dialogue and data collection, participation and commitment, supportive leadership, and the
implementation of actions based on the data collection stage.