IBM Celebrates 100 Years of Innovation

Happy centennial birthday, IBM. This year, IBM celebrates 100 years of innovation, risk taking and transformation

CEO, Samuel J. Palmisano was in Singapore last Friday to speak at IBM’s Centennial Lecture organized by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Reading through his speech, I have two things to highlight: (1) transformation and (2) think long term.

(1) Transformation

IBM came a long way. It isn’t just start-ups which need to pivot, IBM, too, pivoted for countless times to ensure it stays relevant in the industry. Revisiting its history, Palmisano gave a concise summary:

“We started off making clocks, scales and cheese slicers, in addition to the punched-card tabulator. After that, it’s a blur: typewriters, vacuum tube calculators, magnetic tape, the first disk drive, the memory chip, FORTRAN, fractals, ATMs, mainframes, mini- computers, personal computers, supercomputers, services, software, analytics… Also, we’ve gone from operating in one country… to more than 170. In some respects we’re only now becoming a truly global enterprise,” said Palmisano.

“Wow, you haven’t done the same thing for 100 years. That’s one way of looking at our history.”

(2) Think Long term

Putting all together, IBM’s history teaches us one thing. Palmisano said that long-term success comes with long-term thinking and management. It sounds straightforward but if taken seriously, it actually affects a corporation’s behavior and choices:

“It determines how and where you invest and allocate resources. It takes a kind of institutional patience to invest in R&D. The payoff, if it ever comes, can take years. It shapes your view of talent development. To develop talent that can lead the enterprise generation after generation takes money, time and patience.”

“And this is not just about people at the top – it’s about developing future leaders broadly and deeply throughout the organization.”

IBM has also put together a film which features one hundred people, who each present the IBM achievement recorded in the year they were born. The film chronology flows from the oldest person to the youngest, offering a history of the company and culminating with its prospects for the future. Definitely worth a watch: