IBM is Cool

Tonight I read about Oracle's lawsuit against Google and then HP's suit against Oracle. I got depressed and did a couple of sarcastic Tweets.

Then I opened up the NYTimes and read IBM's essay celebrating their 100 years. While it takes a couple of cheap shots at founder-driven companies (Apple, Oracle and Facebook envy), it is a very aspirational piece.

My favorite quote is:
"I believe that if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself, except its beliefs." - Thomas Watson, Jr.

I admit, I am a sucker for IBM. My Dad worked there from the mid 1960's until his retirement. I had a summer job in the Glendale Labs where I wrote 11 lines of code that went into all of the company's 300 and 600 lpm band printers in the late 70's. I attended a day long class in the history and culture of IBM, learning the importance of THINK, of respect, and the value of technology. Tom Watson, Jr. wrote my Dad a note when I got a broken leg in 6th grade. My Dad "feared" for me when I took a job at Digital Equipment rather than IBM a couple of years out of college. I competed head-head with IBM's Tony Shaloop (sp?) at the duPont Experimental Station in the mid 80's. I had my respectful differences of opinion with IBM open source guru Bob Sutor in the mid 2000's. The listened to best guy I ever worked with, Al Smith, as he raved over the past 3 years after his company (Princeton Softech) was acquired by IBM. I have the 3 shares of IBM stock framed on the wall next to my home office desk that my Dad gave me with the words "Break in case of emergency" written on the back.

I think Tom Jr.'s words are relevant today as each of us make our daily choices. It is all about core values. Doing the right THINK.

And, yes, I was proud when Watson kicked Ken Jennings and Brad Rutters butts...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ringside Winding Down

A year ago, a group of us met in a pizza parlor to discuss how we could bring the social web to every website and business. In January, we launched Ringside Networks with seed funding from Matrix Partners, one of the best VC firms in the country. By the end of March we released into open source an initial beta of our Social Application Server – a very ambitious project. We got some very positive reviews on our approach, our implementation and the need in the marketplace for every website to become social. We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact. The story sounds almost too good to be true. And it w...
Read more

Capitalism vs. the Three Legged Stool

Image
Wikipedia defines: " Capitalism  is an  economic system  in which trade, industry and the  means of production  are controlled by private owners with the goal of making  profits  in a  market economy ." This definition has always bothered me. I prefer a different model where there is equal recognition of the three primary drivers behind the success of a company: Owners Employees Customers I like to think of it as a three legged stool, where each leg is as important as the other.  One gets too large or small and the stool tips over. The free market is supposed to take care of Employees and Customers.  Employees because the Owners will create so many jobs that due to supply and demand, employees will receive competitive pay.  Customers because if the owners are not building the right thing, then they can go elsewhere. As someone who has helped to build about 10 startup companies now, I have seen the power in mak...
Read more

Galbraith Revisited

Image
To follow up on my post from a while ago, Galbraith sited 5 key reasons for the 1929 crash and following depression: 1. The bad distribution of income. 2. The bad corporate structure. 3. The bad banking structure. 4. The dubious state of the foreign balance. 5. The poor state of economic intelligence. To compare this to today: 1. Bad income distribution. 1929 - Top 5% received about 33% of all personal income. 1929 - Top 1% held 44% of all wealth. 2000 - Top 1% received about 20% of all personal income. 2004 - Top 1% held 34% of all wealth. Here is a picture of the real income gains between 1979 and 2005 by percentage. It is clear that the top income groups are gaining ground faster than lower income groups - creating an income distribution that approaches 1929. 2. Bad corporate structure. In the 1929 era there had been a large rise in a "vast structure of holding companies and investment trusts... In particular the dividends from the operating companies paid the interest on t...
Read more