Dr Albrecht Ferling

'We have decided to go back to our roots as a start-up 61 years ago with $500 in venture capital, and to try to apply those lessons to a $50bn company,' explains Dr Albrecht Ferling, general manager Hewlett-Packard Middle East. 'We are relatively late here, and have just opened up in Egypt and Saudi Arabia'.

Dr Albrecht sees the Internet as part of the solution to this late arrival on the Mid-East market. 'Start-ups are creating the market, and need to be supported by smart capital,' he says. 'We are supporting Epticar, the venture capital fund, to select and screen new dot-coms'.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon Hewlett-Packard is supporting an E-Biz Challenge competition for Government applications. And Dr Albrecht is a big supporter of the Dubai Internet City.

'Dubai is at the leading edge in the region, and the 1,800 entries for its E-Biz Challenge competition showed just how seriously the DIC is being taken, with entries even from the US. It is the speed of the leadership here, and the setting of stretch goals that is so impressive. The goals stretch people to make it'.

But surely the current Middle East crisis in Palestine must be causing HP quite a headache?

'We have not felt any impact on business outside Israel and Palestine, and we are represented in both,' says Dr Albrecht. 'We have a reputation for sticking with places in difficult times. We were into Russia in 1969, and stayed, for example. Most people in the Middle East want peace, and we hope that extremism will not prevail.

'In fact the oil money is beginning to appear in the market with a pick-up in PC sales, and we can see a lot of demand on the infrastructure side and interest in ASPs. There are major projects coming here, and it makes it easier that the Governments are so important in directing things'.

Yet isn't the idea of a massive company like Hewlett-Packard going back to its origins in somebody's garage is a bit ridiculous. How close can a $50bn company get to a modern start-up?

'Both the founders of HP were university professors, and I think that reminds us of the important role education plays in IT,' says Dr Albrecht. 'The whole business of being customer focused is also very much like a start-up and improving the customer experience of HP is a priority'.

HP has another unusual reason for its new approach. Three out of five of the top executives in HP, including its ceo, are now women. Is this making a difference to corporate culture?

'Where men are more competitive, women like to work as a team,' says Dr Albrecht. 'Our ceo likes to say that we have moved from being a house of 100 brands to being a branded house. Including women is a releasing of untapped potential. I noted that the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Oman was a woman. It is happening everywhere'.