During the late 1990s and through 2005, Carly Fiorina was one of the most powerful women in technology. As CEO of HP, she developed a reputation as a respected and effective manager, doubling HP’s revenue, buying Compaq in the process, and debuting as Fortune magazine’s first ever “Most Powerful Woman in Business”.
Fiorina is not without her detractors in the Valley (her departure was a story in itself), but she’s an indisputable powerhouse, and she seems ready and poised for her next act. According to most reports, that act will be as a Republican challenger to longtime incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer. During the 2008 election, Fiorina acted as a economic advisor to John McCain, addressing the Republican National Convention, a move often seen as a precursor to public life.
Fiorina will join us on our first night at dinner to have a wide ranging discussion about the state of technology, policy, and politics. I’m really looking forward to this conversation, and could use your help to identify the best things to discuss with her. What do you want to hear from Carly Fiorina?
Others we’ll be interviewing (and I’ve asked for your help):
To come: Aneesh Chopra, Austan Goolsbee, Paul Otellini, Shantanu Narayen, Tim Armstrong, Tim Berners Lee, and more. Again, an amazing lineup.
If you want to come, I can still get you a Searchblog discount (for a few more days). Just ping me here.
Was the transition from a technology leader to public life a natural one or was it more of a “I’ve done everything I can in tech and now it’s time to try something else”? Also does she foresee more technology leaders moving into public service in the future?
Does she find any differences among political groups in terms of level of advancement and willingness to embrace technology? I guess I am wondering more on a personal, day-to-day level.
I work at HP and I met Carly in person twice. I think a lot of us still miss her vision and charisma. It would be interesting to know how she thinks that the experience of running one of the largest tech companies in the world – and being malignantly booted out of it – impacted her view on large corporations. As a politician, does she believe that corporations need to have values and core principles that go beyond share value and profit? Is this still applicable and valuable in the 21st century? Do politicians have values? Thanks.
In a recent Washington Post interview
In a recent Washington Post interview Elizabeth Warren suggested that the American leadership class in the last few decades had essentially come to view our middle class as a “Thanksgiving Turkey” to be carved up and devoured rather than nurtured as the core of freedom and viable representative government.(her video is available via my blog if interested)
Many would suggest that the corporate sector has participated with political leadership in BOTH parties in that feast…
And profited by moves to cheap labor and development of foreign markets only made possible via the use of the accumulated capital and purchasing power of the American middle class who’ve been completely left behind in this transition.
Over time expanded trade is good, but the inevitable pain is being borne here by those who financed it through generations of blood and sweat?
If labor is ONLY a component in production then, you are right, cost is the only consideration…
But if there is a relevancy to the viability of the social organism (see Social Networks & The Social Organism – Healing the Breach ) which is at the true heart of Adam Smith’s ideas…
then this cannot be so and labor’s betterment must be considered as central to the social organism itself!
So, that’s my question for Ms. Fiorina…
How does she view the relationship between labor and business as it relates especially to cross-border issues of trade, immigration, labor-rights, taxes and law?
Oh yeah… and her view on intra-national usury as a source of financial profit vs social cost?
A month before the end of her tenure at HP, Fortune magazine’s celebrated financial reporter wrote a Fortune cover story compellingly arguing that Fiorina’s big bet on the merger w/Compaq hadn’t paid off. What evidence can she provide that if California makes a big bet on her it won’t take the beating (that it can so Ill afford) that she inflicted on HP?
Nilofer Merchant states that companies succeed when they kill off so-so ideas and focus on key strategies to help them win repeatedly. How did Ms. Fiorina do that at HP and how will she use that strategy if elected to the Senate?
http://bit.ly/thenewhow