You can tell a lot about a company’s spirit by the way it handles innovation.

Some live to lead the way, others prefer the safety of “wait and see.”

When I was reading about how HP passed over Thunderbolt in its new PCs, it stirred an ancient memory on this topic.

I was working on behalf of Apple when iMovie came out. Apple, of course, invested heavily in iMovie, plastering its message all over TV. You’ll have to remember, the ability to make cool videos on your computer was brand-new then. There was no YouTube. Apple wanted to get people thinking about something they hadn’t been thinking about before.

About a year later, I was working in the world of Intel (before they hooked up with Apple). By this time, there were plenty of apps for making videos on a PC. Intel, interested in creating a new campaign for consumers, decided they should first ask consumers what they like to do on their computers. So they ran focus groups all around the country. They found that most people were browsing the Internet and doing email (duh), and that sharing photos was the third biggest thing. Way down near the bottom of the list was making videos.

Email and browsing were a little too boring even for Intel, so they chose to highlight photos in their ads. In other words, they chose to sell people on what they were already doing vs. opening their eyes to something new.

I thought this was pretty sad, considering their technology enabled all kinds of cool things. They could have ridden the wave, but instead they followed it.

So the other day I was reading this PC World interview with HP’s worldwide marketing manager for desktops, Xavier Lauwaert.

Asked why HP chose not to include the new high-speed Thunderbolt technology in its latest line of desktop PCs, Lauwaert said, “Haven’t found a value proposition in it yet.”

He went on to explain, “On the PC side, everybody seems to be content with the expansion of USB 3.0. Do we need to go into more fancy solutions? Not convinced yet.”

Now I do understand that the verdict is not yet in on Thunderbolt. It’s more HP’s language that I find disturbing. (Assuming that Lauwaert is authorized to speak for the company. If not, he should be slapped.)

For a company built on innovation to hold back on new technology because they think customers are “content” is kind of lame. To ask “Do we need to go into more fancy solutions?” makes it sound like innovating is too much of a bother for HP.

Listening to these words leads one to believe it’s a case of either-or. It isn’t. Apple added Thunderbolt to iMac in addition to its other ports. It sounds more like rationale than putting the customer first.

If HP was built on invention, and it wishes to stand for invention, it really should act a bit more like it cares about invention. Not just in products, but in the words they choose.