For businesspeople and investors, she's a household name. That might be because Carly Fiorina turns the wheel at one of the icons of the technology era, Hewlett-Packard. It might be because she's a compelling speaker and an imaginative marketer. It might be because she is one of only eight women leading a FORTUNE 500 company. But as the person who engineered the $19 billion merger with Compaq--and fought off a shareholder challenge--she was guaranteed star status.
When Fiorina took over HP, it had known decades of success, and still credited its legendary "HP Way" culture for much of it. But its...