HP Kittyhawk Case Study

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that Hewlett-Packard's Kittyhawk project for the emerging handheld computing market never succeeded in the commercial market due to unforeseen events and mistakes. The paper explains the main reason for the failure, which involved the handheld computing market, project expectations, the design limitation and the project's resource allocation. The paper then discusses the actions that the Disk Memory Division (DMD)and the Kittyhawk team could have taken to prevent the failure of the project and the department.

Outline:
Introduction
Reasons Leading to Failure
Avoiding Failure
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The Kittyhawk project was initiated to help HP become a major player in the hard disk industry in the long run. Although HP has been selling disk drives since 1984 it was still a niche player in the industry by 1991. Bruce Spenner, the general manager of HP's Disk Memory Division (DMD), believed that HP needed to develop a new hard disk that would "take the computing market by storm" (Rogers 1997, p 51) if it was to achieve its goal of becoming a big player in the hard disk industry. Therefore the Kittyhawk project set out to develop a new small and robust hard disk for the emerging handheld computing market. Although the hard disk was completed, it never succeeded in the commercial market due to unforeseen events and mistakes."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bournellis, C 1996, 'HP closes disk drive unit, sees order loss', Electronic News, vol. 42, no. 2125, pp.1-3.
• Christensen, C & Raynor, EM 2003, The Innovator's Solution, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, Boston.
• Cooper, R, Edgett, S & Kleinschmidt, E 2001, 'Portfolio management for new product development: result of an industry practices study', R&D Management, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 361-381.
• Costlow, T 1994, 'Hewlett-Packard clips its Kittyhawk's wings', Electronic Engineering Times, no. 814, pp. 1-2.
• CNET 2001, No slowdown for PDA boom, CNET News, CBS Interactive. Available from: <http://news.cnet.com/No-slowdown-for-PDA-boom/2009-1040_3-250418.html> [2 April 2009].

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