Dion Weisler, CEO, HP Inc, reveals that an intern helped to grow the idea of the mobile printer and how innovation is an important part of the company’s vision.
CNBC reported on an interview with Weisler who said that the vision of Sprocket came from an intern who was still in high school that prompted the company to design the mobile printer. The young interns were asked if they used printers but three of the 14 year olds said that they had no need for it. Weisler asked what they did about putting a photo on the wall and the intern though he meant his phone.
It was this that drove the team to develop the Sprocket to “make print relevant” even to those 14 year olds and it has been a success allowing photos to be printed directly from smartphones and retailing for $129 (€114) it is a very popular device. Weisler commented: “We think it’s just the birth of a new category. It’s about reducing that glide slope of decline that we’d seen in home-based printing, and I think it’s this kind of innovation that really is required and expected of market leaders.”
Innovation has been the driving force since the company split and the article noted that revenues for HP Inc were up seven percent on the previous year while Weisler said: “while innovation was the driving factor, cutting costs did play a role in what management called a “breakthrough quarter” for HP.
“You’ve got to look at the market, you’ve got to be realistic. Get those costs under control. Then you start to think about, ‘How can we innovate? How can we think through the lens of a customer and deliver sleek, beautiful designs, sprinkles of magic, deliver on a security promise across both printing and personal systems … and, you know, do that in a cost envelope that really adds value to customers. And when you do that, it works.”
HP Inc has recently entered the 3D printing market and Wisler stated: “We see ways that we can really transform the way traditional manufacturing is done without warehouses and without tied-up cost to capital. in the future, we’re going to democratise manufacturing in a way that really hasn’t changed since the assembly line more than 100 years ago.”
You can watch the video here: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000623358