Computing's early focus on speed for scientific calculations gave way to commercial applications, playing to the strengths of the small company that would become IBM. With a focus on technology, marketing, and perhaps a dash of monopoly, IBM climbed to market dominance and widespread admiration. Spurred by ambitions to grow even larger, IBM's fortunes faltered. Lou Gerstner, the former "Cookie Man" of RJR Nabisco, pulled the company back from catastrophe. Unfortunately, his successors embraced financial schemes, ignoring the fundamental imperative of innovation. The pace of technology is unforgiving, and even an IBM would discover this.
The author provides deft storytelling with well-drawn portraits of the people and ideas that propelled computing forward. He deciphers the inner workings and import of each technology transformation. The book is a compelling story of how IBM and computing transformed the world, and how a company so iconic in the 20th Century became so troubled in the 21st. Today, a decidedly smaller IBM struggles to regain relevance, let alone its former dominance. With AI and quantum computers poised to dramatically reshape the computing world, will IBM be part of the continuing story?
The book differs from the many existing books on IBM:
- It tells the extraordinary story of IBM but within the context of the relentless forward march of computing technology beginning thousands of years ago with the abacus.
- The reader will come away with a greater understanding of the technologies and strategies that were critical to the company's success.
- It is an insider's account, with academic quality research and rigor, and the cooperation of IBM.
- Where most IBM books treat the company as big mainframe computers and little else, the author reveals the lesser-known story of the smaller IBM, an upstart division with personal and midrange computers that grew into a $14 billion business.
- Most importantly, the story pulls no punches. The author chronicles the failed financial strategies and missed technology waves that were the company's undoing.
