The most momentous first meeting in modern business history took place inthe unlikely setting of a bench beside a football field, between two Stanford University students in pads and helmets. A few years later in 1938, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were working out of a small garage in Palo Alto, California, building their first product, an audio oscillator. It was the start not only of a legendary company but of an entire way of life in Silicon Valley - and, ultimately, our modern digital age. Others have written about the rise of Hewlett-Packard, including Packard himself in a bestselling memoir. But acclaimed journalist Michael S. Malone is the first to get the full story, based on unlimited and exclusive access to corporate and private archives, along with hundreds of employee interviews. Malone draws on his new material to show how some of the most influential products of our time were invented, and how a culture of innovation led HP to unparalleled success for decades. He also shows what was really behind the groundbreaking management philosophy - "the HP Way" - that put people ahead of products or profits. There have been attempts in recent years to discredit the HP Way as soft and outdated. But Malone argues that the HP Way was a hard- nosed business philosophy that combined simple objectives, trust in employees to make the right choices, and ruthless self-appraisal. It created a ferociously competitive and adaptive company - arguably the world's greatest company.