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Apple and IBM do different things in 2011 than they did in 1981. Apple is primarily a consumer hardware company. IBM is primarily a business-to-business softwar

by jbail 15y ago

Apple and IBM do different things in 2011 than they did in 1981. Apple is primarily a consumer hardware company. IBM is primarily a business-to-business software and services company. The author is right, Apple has completely crushed it over the past decade or so...but IBM hasn't been going after the consumer hardware market for awhile. The comparison is sort of apples and oranges. Over the course of 30 years, technology companies will obviously need to adapt to changes. Also keep in mind (and this isn't meant to disparage Apple), but they were almost dead until one man, Steve Jobs took over. It's his vision that brought Apple back from the dead. Over the long term (30 years from now), we'll have to see how that plays out. I couldn't name one specific person at IBM who's responsible for their success and they're doing very well these days too.

qohen 15y ago
> I couldn't name one specific person at IBM who's responsible for their success One (very) specific person: Louis V. Gerstner. Like Jobs, he saved his company. Unlike Jobs, he was very much an outsider, but this apparently was what IBM needed to push change, given their hidebound culture. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#IBM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#IBM "Gerstner is credited with saving IBM from going out of business in the early 1990s. In his memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his arrival at the company in April 1993, when an active plan was in place to disaggregate the company. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed for obsolescence. The company's own management was in the process of allowing its various divisions to rebrand and manage themselves — the so-called "Baby Blues." Gerstner reversed this plan, realizing from his previous experiences at RJR and American Express that there remained a vital need for a broad-based information technology integrator. His decision to keep the company together was the defining decision of his tenure. The subsequent refocusing on the IT services business (which grew to nearly 50% of the IBM's revenues), the embrace of the Internet as a business phenomenon, and a broad effort to revive the company's culture are widely seen as having resulted in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in business history."

by jbail 15y ago

qohen 15y ago

> I couldn't name one specific person at IBM who's responsible for their success One (very) specific person: Louis V. Gerstner. Like Jobs, he saved his company. Unlike Jobs, he was very much an outsider, but this apparently was what IBM needed to push change, given their hidebound culture. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#IBM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#IBM "Gerstner is credited with saving IBM from going out of business in the early 1990s. In his memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his arrival at the company in April 1993, when an active plan was in place to disaggregate the company. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed for obsolescence. The company's own management was in the process of allowing its various divisions to rebrand and manage themselves — the so-called "Baby Blues." Gerstner reversed this plan, realizing from his previous experiences at RJR and American Express that there remained a vital need for a broad-based information technology integrator. His decision to keep the company together was the defining decision of his tenure. The subsequent refocusing on the IT services business (which grew to nearly 50% of the IBM's revenues), the embrace of the Internet as a business phenomenon, and a broad effort to revive the company's culture are widely seen as having resulted in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in business history."