IBM - Publications - Faculty & Research

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

counterproductive. Companies should save the benchmarking surveys for commoditized processes or services. Benchmarking became popular several decades ago as part of the total quality management movement. An IBM executive defined it as... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

Web

John H. McArthur | About

assignment as a Trustee in Bankruptcy of the Penn Central Transportation Company. For much of that decade, he fielded a team that included future Secretary of State Warren Christopher and future IBM CEO Lou Gerstner to resolve the... View Details

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why IT Does Matter

take 1955 (with the IBM 701) as the start date and use eighty years as a technology cycle, 2035 may not be far off the mark for playing much of this out. Even then, the special recombinant nature of this technology makes us uncomfortable... View Details

Keywords: by F. Warren McFarlan & Richard L. Nolan

24 May 2017
News

Ilene H. Lang, MBA 1973

international product development until she was promoted to lead its $500-million desktop business group. Two years later, when IBM acquired the firm, she was recruited by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to build its software... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

10 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

Globalization: The Strategy of Differences

business secrets would spill over to its competing line of business. They also feared that Acer could cross-subsidize its own brand with profits from its contract-manufacturing operations and so undercut their prices. In 2000, the strategy blew up when View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

22 Feb 2024
News

GCC Crossroads Aims for a Bright Future; Seattle Alumni Talk Leadership in Tech; Italy Preps for European Alumni Summit

gathering at the IBM Center to explore the Summit’s theme, Geopolitical Disruption: Opportunities and Hedges, with world-class CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and HBS faculty. According to club board member and the summit’s co-organizer,... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

23 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative

foster competition down the line, as IBM did when it let the IP of essential components slip out of its own hands and into the grasp of Microsoft and Intel. Finding those people who have the will and desire to innovate in your system can... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons, Julia Hanna & Roger Thompson

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Organizational Behavior Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

article "Organizational Ambidexterity: IBM and Emerging Business Opportunities" ( California Management Review , summer 2009). The Accenture Award is given each year to the author (or authors) of the article published in the preceding... View Details

01 Dec 2009
News

One Man Crime Wave

society gets, the more semi-legal ways to steal.” (The Deep Blue Good-By, 1964) “A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.” (The Deep Blue Good-By, 1964) “Think, dammit! Like the little signs IBM used to distribute... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; fiction writing; Arts, Entertainment; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

the solution. In prior writings, we called this strategy “coring.”5 There are several examples. In order to solve the problem of how to build an IBM-compatible personal computer during the 1980s, which IBM tried to control as a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Dec 2004
News

Ideas: Faculty Research Online

new book, Implementing E-Commerce Strategies: A Guide to Corporate Success after the Dot.Com Bust, shows how to put appropriate metrics to work to measure performance. IBM Finds Profit in Diversity Former View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

24 May 2004
Research & Ideas

The Watsons: IBM’s Troubled Legacy

humor in the idea of the man they labeled "a dirty Talmud Jew," lodged a protest with the State Department, and refused to participate in the festivities. The IBM is not merely an organization of men; it is an institution that... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow

19 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Alfred Chandler on the Electronic Century

defining the computer industry's products. In large computer systems its most successful competitors were those enterprises that produced and sold IBM-designed "plug-compatible" hardware and "unbundled" software. In personal computers they were... View Details

Keywords: by Alfred D. Chandler, Takashi Hikino & Andrew Von Nordenflycht; Computer; Consumer Products; Electronics; Manufacturing; Technology

Frank T. Cary

Following the legacies of Watson Sr. and Watson Jr., who ran IBM for almost 60 years, was no easy feat, but Cary more than proved his mettle. Under his direction, IBM expanded into new markets outside its... View Details

Keywords: Computers & Electronics

01 Jun 1998
News

Diversity and Community

first annual Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership to IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. (MBA '65) and Levi Strauss CEO Robert D. Haas (MBA '68). The two chief executives received the newly established award on behalf of their companies'... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

Though his father had turned IBM into a tremendously successful company, the firm that Thomas Jr. inherited was largely a mix of loosely organized divisions that competed with one another for resources. After an intensive restructuring,... View Details