Hurd's instinct.

The article focuses on the appointment of Mark Hurd as CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. With reasonable speed for such matters--less than two months after firing its chief executive, Carly Fiorina--the board of Hewlett-Packard (HP), the world's second-largest computer maker after Dell, has found a new boss. His name, HP announced on March 29th, is Mark Hurd, and his most noticeable characteristic is that he is very unlike his predecessor. Only two years younger than Ms Fiorina, at 48, he has spent his career very differently. For 25 years he grunted his way through various departments at NCR, another (albeit much smaller) hardware maker with a sprawling portfolio of businesses, becoming its chief executive two years ago. Under Ms Fiorina, HP appeared to lose out to both Dell, a leaner, meaner hardware maker, and IBM, a more sophisticated seller of computer services, as well as to consumer-electronics firms with more sex appeal. According to Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm, Mr Hurd is that kind of "operational CEO "--someone who will not be "jetting around, talking about the world economy" instead of tending to the nuts and bolts. Patricia Dunn, HP's chairman, said the board did not intend to change HP's strategy by splitting the firm's profitable printer business from its struggling computer business, as several analysts and shareholders had been demanding. Rather, she said, the board wanted somebody who would simply execute better. Barring a change in strategy, however, that will be difficult. IBM does well in part because most of its revenues come from services, and Dell because it knows how to take the cost out of making hardware.