When I was a researcher at IBM's Watson lab in Yorktown Heights, a standard explanation for many of the research projects was to give "luster" to the company.

When I was a researcher at IBM's Watson lab in Yorktown Heights, a standard explanation for many of the research projects was to give "luster" to the company. It's easy to suspect that the main goal of the Watson computer playing Jeopardy was really just luster. Really, there were some severely negative attitudes on (1) Research working on projects that could result in revenue and (2) transferring projects from Research to the rest of the company for development or sales. Our project in Research was quite exceptional and transferred two projects, both of which went to customers and got sold, but our group was unusual, and our success was not wanted by the higher ups. At one time Gerstner mentioned "all the exciting projects coming out of Research" -- right, about like the wings about to sprout on all those pigs. The explanation I like about IBM is one given to me by the manager of the Chicago branch office: "You might think of IBM as an electronics company or a computer company, but you would be wrong. IBM is a marketing company, and it would get into the grocery business tomorrow if it saw a business opportunity there. You might think that Research comes up with new product designs, development turns them into products, and marketing sells them, but that is exactly backwards. Instead, marketing figures out what they can sell, development builds it, and they go to Research if necessary." So, maybe the current changes amount to IBM trying some new things to market.