I've worked at HP for over 10 years, and I love HP and its core values and its culture. HP continues to evolve organically and through mergers and acquisitions, some big (Compaq) and some small (VooDoo). Amazingly, HP's core values strongly live on... and its culture grows with each acquisition.

It's been amazing to have VooDoo join HP and watch our combined company grow. It's no secret that VooDoo co-founder Rahul Sood loves HP Labs. I'm the lucky lab director who cares for much of the cool research that Rahul loves!

We started to put HP Labs and VooDoo together before we (HP Labs) knew about the acquisition. We had some technology that we were developing for the HP Halo business. Then our then-secret HP gaming guys led by Phil McKinney came by and asked us to apply our technology to gaming. My researchers pounced on the opportunity, working day and night to modify the technology for gaming and create a working prototype. They flew the prototype to NYC for a mystery event. At the event, they found out that it was to announce the HP acquisition of VooDoo! Our technology was demonstrated as part of the announcement. My researchers were pumped!

Immediately following the announcement, Phil brought Rahul to HP Labs. HP Labs instantly became Rahul's sand box. I had a lab offsite the following week, and I invited Rahul and the HP gaming folks to attend. Rahul gave one of his killer talks which instantly show what Rahul and VooDoo are all about. It was such a perfect match. Rahul believes in passion, technology, and innovation. HP Labs researchers believe in passion, technology, and innovation. As Rahul said, "it's like we were separated at birth".

The one thing that is different is that Rahul pursued passion, technology, and innovation as a gaming entrepreneur while the HP Labs folks pursued them as researchers. Put the two together, and you have quite a combination!

Rahul's energy is infectious and the HP Labs researchers are energized. Rahul and HP Labs truly want to get HP Labs technologies into VooDoo products and customer hands. VooDoo provides us with a whole new avenue for technology transfer, and this excites us! On top of that, we have a large underground gaming community that now gets to pursue gaming for their day jobs. Yes, our gaming community is ecstatic... and growing! Managing research is about aligning passions, and I can safely say, we're aligned!

HP Labs and VooDoo are working together on a number of projects. HP and HP Labs have embraced so much of VooDoo's culture that we can say "VooDoo acquires HP!"

Tags: VooDoo, HP Labs, gaming, culture, passion, acquisition, Rahul Sood, HP

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