HP Won Innovation Awards. Then Killed What Made It True.

Three years on the Most Innovative list. Thirteen years absent. Here's what changed—and what it proves about causation.

I was about to make a multimillion-dollar mistake.

It was 2007. Three VPs had sent me the same proposal: HP should implement 20% time like Google. Give engineers one day a week for passion projects. Innovation would follow. The logic was seductive, the precedent was proven, and I was ready to approve it.

Then Chuck House and I were chatting.

“Before you do…