HP Kittyhawk Drive Case Analysis: Strategy & Recommendations
This paper examines the HP Kittyhawk project, a pioneering 1.3-inch hard disk drive introduced in 1992 as the world's smallest storage device. Despite its innovative design intended to enable mobile and handheld computing, sales fell far short of projected revenues by 1994. The paper reviews the competitive landscape—including flash memory and rival 1.8-inch drives—identifies the market timing problems that hampered Kittyhawk's adoption, and evaluates three strategic options available to the project leader. It concludes with a recommendation to pursue second-generation R&D while simultaneously developing a proactive marketing strategy to cultivate consumer demand for mobile devices.
- Introduction: The Kittyhawk Vision: Background on HP's 1.3-inch drive and project goals
- Market Challenges and Competitive Landscape: Flash memory rivals and market timing problems
- The Sales Shortfall and Available Options: Three strategic options after revenue targets missed
- Recommendation: Second-Generation R&D and Proactive Marketing: Pursue next-gen drive while cultivating consumer demand
- Conclusion: R&D and marketing must work in coordination
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What makes this paper effective
- Clearly frames the business problem by grounding the analysis in specific historical context—HP's 1992 product launch and its two-year sales failure—before moving to recommendations.
- Acknowledges the team's enthusiasm as both an asset and a liability, demonstrating balanced evaluation rather than one-sided critique.
- The recommendation integrates two departments (R&D and marketing) into a coordinated strategy, showing systems-level thinking about organizational problem-solving.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a classic case-analysis structure: situation summary, problem identification, options enumeration, and justified recommendation. This technique keeps the argument focused and ensures every analytical claim connects back to evidence from the case, avoiding unsupported assertions.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with background on the Kittyhawk project and Bruce Spenner's vision, then narrates the competitive and market-timing problems that emerged by the third month of production. It enumerates three strategic options before recommending the second-generation development path paired with a forward-looking marketing initiative. The conclusion reinforces the need for R&D and marketing to work in concert rather than in isolation.
Introduction: The Kittyhawk Vision
HP's new hard disk drive was the world's smallest in 1992. At the size of a couple of postage stamps, the drive was intended to revolutionize the way the industry thought about computing and to launch a new mobile era. Yet two years later, sales had failed to reflect this revolution, and the leader of the disk drive project had to decide whether to keep pushing the program or abandon it altogether.
The vision of Bruce Spenner, who joined HP in 1978 to expand the horizons of the Disk Memory Division, was for large data storage to be used by personal computers and mobile, handheld devices. This was the emerging market of the future, and the 1.3-inch drive was at the heart of it. The project to implement and market the drive was called Kittyhawk, and its goals included introducing the drive within one year and achieving a $100 million revenue rate within two years.
Market Challenges and Competitive Landscape
At the same time, competitors were developing flash memory as well as a 1.8-inch disk drive. Because decreases in drive size had historically proceeded in roughly one-inch intervals, the 1.8-inch drive seemed like the next logical progression. Kittyhawk, on the other hand, aimed to leap past that next step and proceed to an even smaller drive. The rationale was that the smaller drive would require less space and less power—ideal attributes for PC and mobile units.
Conclusion
This recommendation takes a proactive approach to the challenge facing the project leader and his group. It allows R&D within HP to continue doing its work and to gain the upper hand on competitors by producing technology superior to anything else on the market. Simultaneously, it gives the marketing department the opportunity to prepare consumers for what is coming by cultivating the consumer culture necessary to ensure the product's success. The two departments should facilitate one another rather than operate in isolation. The time is at hand for the next generation in computer technology, and HP should stay the course it has projected.
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