Is Hewlett-Packard Still a Visionary Company?

VI. Conclusions
The environment around HP has changed during the last years and HP has made decisions to follow new trends and new technologies. Of course, these changes have influence on the questions, whether HP is still a visionary company like in the early 90´s.
If we compare the HP development during the last years with the definition of a visionary company (see II. B - Definition of visionary company), most of the arguments are still in compliance with the given points. For example points 6 and 7. HP made possibly some strategic and organizational mistakes during the last years (see II B.3 - Skepticism today) but this characterized a visionary company.
Visionary companies mainly concentrate on improving themselves and not on beating competitors. Visionary companies ask themselves: "How can we improve ourselves to do better tomorrow than we did today?" Compaq was one of HP´s most important competitors in the past, but now HP merges with them. If we follow the definition and HP is a visionary company they have to find a way to connect the R & D organizations and management systems of both companies to find the best way to improve them. But up to now HP and Compaq have only tried to save money and to achieve a "lean production" which is not an attribute of a visionary company.
…