Autonomous?

Another item of news that we missed here (partly due to the Jubilee) was the departure from HP of Mike Lynch.  This against a background of HP shedding a reported 27,000 staff worldwide.  Lynch was the only named individual to leave the company (that I saw).

Famously, Lynch founded and grew Autonomy - a software company specialising in high-end search tools built around Bayesian mathematics - to become one of Britain's most successful high-technology companies.  He was notoriously proud of being British, and there were always rumours that Microsoft had offered him shed-loads for the firm and that he had always refused.

A few years back, I went to their offices, in an industrial park just outside Cambridge, to see if they could help us at the Museum.  They had a certain flavour.  Each meeting room was named for a different Bond villain (I think we were in the Goldfinger suite).  As I was leaving I noticed the fish tank behind the receptionist's desk actually contained pirhanas.  'Yes, Mike makes the least successful salesman each month fee the fishes,' joked my host.  He was apparently very proud of Bond as the home-grown, Brit super-agent, and wanted to make a point about the British being competent and world-class at some stuff.

Anyway, HP eventually bought Autonomy last year for £7bn.  The rumours are that the entrepreneurial small-business culture in Cambridge clashed horribly with the international corporatism of HP.  And that lots of high-calibre people have already left the Autonomy part of the business - and thus Lynch's departure was unsurprising.  Also speculation about how long the Autonomy part will exist as a separate arm before being fully merged in.  All a little sad, I guess, although Lynch has left with loads of dosh and an apparent intent to invest in and to build more innovative British firms.  We shall see.  Perhaps he'll turn up on Dragon's Den.

On the same day as the HP announcement, Jonathan Ive became a 'Sir' for his work on industrial design.  Most famously of course, he was the key designer for a lot of Apple's i-stuff.  So the shiny look and feel that people love about the Apple products is attributed to his work.   Well done, of course, but - probably unfairly - it feels somewhat superficial to me by comparison with the Autonomy software.  And of course, although a hugely successful British industrial designer, he ended up working in the US to gain that success.