I generally agree with Mr. Dignan's thoughts ("Next HP CEO needs to deliver growth and vision not just cost cuts"), but I challenge his assertion that "...the next CEO...is going to have to show that HP can grow organically sans acquisitions and cost cuts..." If by "organically" Mr. Dignan means by way of internally-generated innovation, I simply can't imagine this being possible.
Assume HP's sales are roughly $30.8B/quarter or $124B/yr . Executives are expected to produce double-digit growth on an annual basis; for the quarter cited, Hurd oversaw roughly 13% increases in sales between 2009-2010, representing $16B/yr new dollars coming in. HP and the market would consider this "adequate," but not up to expectations.
There is simply no way that companies the size of HP can innovate internally at a scale sufficient to create anything like $16B new dollars/annually. Even if HPLabs had 10x the research staff --- 5000 Labbies instead of ~500, down from 600+ in 2009 --- a company of that size will only meet its objectives by aggressively acquiring market share.
Organic growth based on an internal, inspired innovation engine is a nice story, but when each of your businesses is itself a multi-billion-dollar market leader with huge growth expectations, it is simply not realistic.
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