Quotes from Barry M. Katz

The dominant characteristic of Silicon Valley was—and remains—the exceedingly fast pace and dynamic instability of the product development cycle within a rapidly changing technology environment.

CEO Bill Hewlett personally authorized a $1 million crash program to develop a miniature, hand-held successor to the successful 9100 series desktop scientific calculator launched four years earlier. By that time, the HP catalog listed some 1,600 products, none of which sold more than ten units per day. Within six months of its launch in January 1972, the new HP-35 was selling 1,000 per day, and a year later accounted for a staggering 41 percent of the company's total profits.