Enrique Lores Discusses Career at HP and the Future of the Company

Enrique Lores, president of HP’s imaging, printing, and solutions business, discussed his career, the split of Hewlett-Packard into two separate companies, and the future of HP Inc. on Wednesday, Sept. 28, at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. The event was hosted by the Stanton Distinguished Leaders Series and the Global Business Initiative.

Throughout his nearly 27 years at HP, Lores has served in many roles, including senior vice president and general manager for business personal systems and senior vice president of customer support and services.

“Even though I have been in HP for 27 years, it many times has been like being in many different companies…,” Lores said. “I have been able to experience many different roles in many functions, from sales [to] marketing to support [to] operations, but also I have been able to work in many different businesses with very different people.”

Before serving in his current role, Lores was the head of the Separation Management Office for HP Inc. Under Lores’s leadership, Hewlett-Packard split into two independent companies: Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which focuses on selling hardware to IT departments, and HP Inc. (also known simply as HP), which concentrates on selling printers and personal computers.

Lores explained the motivation behind the split into two separate companies with independent emphases.

“[The company split] for two reasons. One [reason] was [that] the company had become too big. Not too big in size, but really in the different businesses of the company…,” Lores said. “[The] second reason for the split was financial. The expectation was that the stock of the two companies would be worth more than the stock of the [original] company.”

Lores also discussed the overarching goal of HP as both a technology and an engineering company.

“We have the ambition of developing technologies that will unite customers and change how customers live [and] how customers work,” Lores said.

According to Lores, HP hopes to meet its goal by growing in three aspects of the market: the home, the office, and graphics.

As a way to reach consumers in the home, Lores presented HP’s new portable printing device. The device uses Bluetooth technology to connect to the owner’s smartphone and print 2×3 photos on sticky-backed paper.

“[Today], the life of a consumer is in their phone. The concept of ‘I take a picture and three days later I go home and print it’ doesn’t work anymore,” Lores said. “You want the picture at the time that you take it… Our new mobile printer enables customers to print from mobile devices.”

In addition to the new portable device, Lores discussed how HP is targeting consumers in the home by redesigning the style of its printers. Recently, HP released a small printer that comes in a variety of colors.

As a final measure to grow in the home market, HP also is working to change its business model to make printing more affordable for the average consumer.

To grow in the office, Lores stated that HP is strategizing to increase its share in the market, expand into the copy business, and strengthen the security of its technology.

“[The] office is really important because usually customers in the office print more than they print at home,” Lores said.

In terms of graphics, which encompasses all other elements of printing other than the home and the office, Lores stated that HP is working to build technology that will enable their devices to print faster and at a lower cost. HP also is hoping to work with brands to print graphics that are personal to the consumer.

Lores remains optimistic for the future of HP.

“We believe in what we call ‘the power of printing,’” Lores said. “We think that people like printing [and] that printing is still a relevant technology for consumers to share their feelings [and] to share their ideas. It is a critical technology in the office for professionals to share their ideas. It is also a very important technology in the new digital world for programmers to be able to use printed materials to communicate with their consumers.”

–Lindsay Reilly