There are two sides to every story, and Fiorina's book apparently gives a very different perspective on her time at HP than what the media portrayed when she first left. Fortune has an interview with her, and she doesn't pull any punches.
As for her successor, Mark Hurd, Fiorina's judgment remains suspended. If anything, she gives him tepid endorsement: "I think to call the last 18 months a turnaround is frankly foolish. That's not to take anything away from what Mark has done… Certainly I agreed with his decision to continue to cut costs. It was what I was planning to do." She says that "clearly" HP is on the same course she charted when she was CEO.
She describes the HP she found on arrival in the frankest terms (as she does in the book). "Everybody at HP focused on incrementalism." "HP had become a bureaucracy." "We had 87 different product lines that never talked to each other. This was not a customer-focused business."
They also offer the complete transcript on the site.
