If Carly Fiorina ever goes into mainstream politics, as many keep predicting, there’s a quote of hers from five years back that may be instructive for the rest of us.

“Customers,” she told the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference in Manchester, “will see a Hewlett-Packard, post-merger with Compaq, that closely resembles the HP of old.” Apparently, what customers wanted “was the ‘HP Way’ with one addition – speed”.

Carly, of course, barely remembers “the old HP”. By the time she joined the company in 1999, the engineering heart and soul had already been cut out from the amazing corporation I first encountered on a visit to Silicon Valley in 1977. That was an organisation in which, famously, “all staff have the same status, with open communications” – which, I discovered, was entirely true when I bumped into Dave Hewlett having lunch in the canteen.

The company that actually inherited the HP Way was Agilent, which still makes test and measurement instruments with the same attention to engineering excellence.

Once Hillary Clinton has either succeeded in, or abandoned, her attempt to get into the White House, Carly’s path to the Oval Office will open up. Along that path, if she makes any more “promises”, write them down and remember them.