CONTACT: Cynthia L. Atwood #173
For Immediate Release: Feb. 20, 1997
New Haven, CT -- Lewis E. Platt, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., will present the next Sheffield Fellowship address at Yale University on Friday, Feb. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in Sudler Auditorium of William Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. His talk is titled "Managing Innovation: An Oxymoron?" and is open to the public. It will be followed by a reception at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Hewlett-Packard HP is an international manufacturer of measurement and computation products, and systems used in industry, business, engineering, science, medicine and education. For more than half a century, the company has had a history of reinventing itself on a regular basis, Mr. Platt says. To do that, HP has had to balance two seemingly different cultures -- the creativity that gives birth to radically new ideas and the discipline required to bring products to market on time, on budget.
Mr. Platt joined HP in 1966 and held a variety of management posts in the company's medical-products operations prior to becoming general manager of the Waltham, Mass., Division in 1974. He was general manager of HP's Analytical Group from 1980-1984 and, from 1984-1988, he managed various parts of the computer business. He was elected a vice president in 1983 and became executive vice president in 1987.
In 1988, Mr. Platt was named to oversee the Computer Products Sector and not long after became head of the Computer Systems Organization. He was elected president and CEO of the company and a member of the board of directors in 1992. The board elected Mr. Platt as its chair when David Packard announced his retirement from that post in 1993.
Mr. Platt holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
In 1995, Platt was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy Negotiations ACTPN by President Clinton and serves as chairman of its World Trade Organization Task Force. He is a director of Pacific Telesis, a member of the Business Council, and of the Business Roundtable. He also serves on the Cornell University Council and the Wharton School Board of Overseers.
The Sheffield Fellowship was established in 1996 to honor the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Founded in 1852 to train engineers, the school produced some of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries before it was absorbed into the growing Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the mid-1940's.
The Sheffield Fellowship brings to Yale leaders and innovators in business, industry, and government. In addition to presenting a lecture, fellows tour laboratories and classrooms and meet with faculty and students. Informal discussions with members of student organizations provide career perspectives in engineering and related fields, according to D. Allan Bromley, Dean of Engineering and sponsor of the fellowship.
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