BUSINESS LEGEND PACKARD DIES : REVERED EXECUTIVE FOUND SUCCESS IN SILICON VALLEY WITH PARTNER HEWLETT.

Byline: Steve Kaufman and Knight-Ridder Newspapers

David Packard, 83, one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, died Tuesday.

The co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co. - perhaps the most innovative and influential business executive in Silicon Valley's history - and a seminal California philanthropist, Packard died of complications from pneumonia.

Packard, who was perhaps the first Silicon Valley executive to wed business acumen with public and political involvement, died in his sleep at Stanford Medical Center - one of the biggest beneficiaries of his largess. He is survived by his children David Woodley Packard, Nancy Ann Packard Burnett, Susan Packard Orr and Julie Elizabeth Packard, who were at his bedside when he died.

A native of Pueblo, Colo., Packard founded Silicon Valley's largest and oldest public company with his friend from their days at Stanford University, William Hewlett, in the garage of his Palo Alto, Calif., home in 1939. From those origins, the company has grown to one that employs more than 100,000 people worldwide, has revenues of more than $31 billion and turns out products used by millions of consumers and businesses.

He was the more visible partner and the business strategist who cultivated the groundwork for a company that strived to nurture its employees as much as its customers - and that eventually became one of the world's biggest and best computer and instrumentation companies.

Packard's influence in turning Silicon Valley into a worldwide center for technology can't be overstated. He engendered a corporate culture in which innovative thinking was embraced and employees were encouraged to challenge their bosses. It was a style copied by companies as diverse as Apple Computer, Silicon Graphics and Tandem Computers. Not coincidentally, the founders of Apple and Tandem worked at Hewlett-Packard. The management style was chronicled by Packard in a book released last year called ``The HP Way.''

``After leading the company for over 50 years, Dave's death is a loss to the company and to the country that he loved so well,'' Hewlett said in a brief statement released by the company. ``As far as the company is concerned, the greatest thing that he left behind him was a code of ethics known as the H-P way. That will serve to guide the company in the years to come. We have a superb management team that has received national recognition, and this loss will not have any direct effect on the company.

``To those of us who knew him, he will always be Dave.''

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Photo: (Color) David Packard chaired a defense panel in 198 6.

Associated Press