How purpose-led portfolio strategy can turn sustainability, Hybrid AI, and relentless focus on customer value into a new standard for business excellence

Jason Kennedy | General Manager | Senior Director, OneHP Sustainability Portfolio Strategy HP

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That perspective is why EliteX is proud to recognize Jason Kennedy in its edition, The 5 Most Impactful General Managers Driving Business Excellence in 2026. His leadership offers a timely example of how responsible innovation can move from aspiration to execution and from promise to measurable value.

“Great leadership connects technology, people, and purpose in ways that create lasting growth, fulfillment and shared progress.”

A Systems Leader Creating Connections

At HP, Jason works across hardware, software, services, engineering, marketing, and go-to-market teams to ensure responsible design and business performance advance together. He is responsible for shaping strategy and building alignment for consequential decisions to accelerate how innovations reach customers and create value at scale.

Jason is drawn to work that requires bringing many moving parts together: technology, people, customer needs, investment choices, and business models. That systems mindset has become central to how he leads. He believes the best strategies are not created in isolation. They emerge when an organization connects around common priorities, understands the broader impact of its decisions, and turns complexity into coordinated action.

Turning Sustainability Into Business Value

One of Jason’s primary responsibilities is developing HP’s sustainability portfolio strategy. That means connecting innovation roadmaps with customer value, business growth, and long-term resilience. His work helps translate topics such as Hybrid/Edge AI, sustainability, and the circular economy into relevant and actionable language that business leaders and customers can use to make better decisions.

For Jason, sustainability becomes powerful when it is embedded into the operating rhythm of the business. It should improve efficiency, strengthen resilience, deepen customer trust, and open new avenues for growth. The opportunity is not simply to have ambitious goals for some distant future, but to make those goals visible in product choices, service models, customer conversations, and everyday execution in the immediate term.

Leading Through Clarity, Trust, and Accountability

In a fast-moving environment, Jason sees one of the biggest leadership challenges as helping organizations move from ambition to implementation. Sustainability and AI both carry enormous potential, but they only deliver value when they become a thoughtful part of practical business decisions and tangible positive outcomes. That requires disciplined execution, clear communication, and the ability to remove process complexity from what is essential to achieve the mission.

Jason motivates teams by connecting day-to-day responsibilities to a larger purpose. By embracing vulnerability as a “superpower”, he strives to create conditions where people understand why their work matters, where trust and learning are encouraged, and where teams have the confidence to collaborate openly, take calculated risks, and grow through challenges. In his view, motivation is not created by micro-management pressure. It comes from clarity, support, and a shared belief in what the team can and ultimately will achieve.

“Expressing vulnerability can be a superpower for creating team trust and informed risk taking”

Responsible Innovation in the Hybrid AI Era

Technology is central to Jason’s work because it is the bridge between strategy and execution. As AI continues to evolve, especially at the Intelligent Edge, organizations have new opportunities to improve productivity, streamline operations, and make smarter decisions. But Jason is clear that technology alone is not enough. The real advantage comes when advanced technology is paired with responsible design, human insight, and disciplined execution.

That belief also shapes his view of HP’s future. He sees an opportunity for HP to demonstrate that technology can deliver outstanding performance while being designed and deployed responsibly. By connecting innovation with measurable customer value, stronger resilience, and thoughtful design, HP is defining a more practical and trusted model of progress in the Hybrid AI era that helps unleash human potential.

A Career Built on Forward Progress, Measurable Impact and Shared Success

Looking back, Jason is proud of work that combined innovation with measurable business impact. At Intel, he helped lead major platform initiatives involving AI-enabled computing and portfolio simplification, contributing billions of dollars in incremental business performance. At HP, he is now focused on connecting differentiated sustainability capabilities with customer value across hardware, software, and services.

Yet Jason’s definition of impact extends beyond immediate business outcomes. He finds deep fulfillment in mentoring future leaders, building cross-functional teams, and helping people realize what they can accomplish together. Collaboration remains one of his strongest leadership principles because he believes today’s biggest business challenges cannot be solved by isolated departments. Engineering, marketing, finance, sustainability, operations, sales, and customer teams all must work from shared ownership of achievements and the learning opportunities from temporary setbacksUsing a sports analogy, Jason believes the most successful General Managers are humble athletes, flexible enough to help the team wherever needed versus trying to be star at a single position. Customer empathy, strategic thinking, product management, operational discipline, financial understanding, and creating organizational resilience through talent development are all important area to continue building acumen throughout your career.

However, he cautions against the trap of trying to do it all, but rather aim to harness the courage to work across boundaries and enlist stakeholders across disciplines. “You can go fast alone, but you will go further, together”.

 Kennedy sums up his advice for aspiring leaders:  Be curious, ask thoughtful questions, and challenge assumptions on why changes are not possible. Then, listen actively, communicate strategic directions openly, and maintain your resolve even when the path is uncertain (nothing is ever risk-free).    

A More Human Definition of Progress

The future of leadership, in Jason’s view, will be shaped by the convergence of AI, sustainability, resilience, customer value and human-centered innovation. That shift will make interdisciplinary leadership more valuable and make trust, transparency, and responsible growth central to business performance and unleashing human potential.

Jason’s vision for HP is both ambitious and grounded: show that business success and sustainability are not competing priorities but reinforcing forces. When innovation creates measurable value for customers while strengthening resilience and responsibility, it does more than improve performance. Innovation expands what progress can mean for businesses, communities, and the people it serves.