Steve Hamm has been a business journalist for over 30 years. He was senior writer in BusinessWeek's information technology section after serving in their Silicon Valley bureau and was then an associate editor in New York. Prior to BusinessWeek, Hamm was an editor and writer for PC Week, the San Jose MercuryNews, the New Haven Register, and other publications. Hamm is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.
And he now is a communication's strategist with IBM. It’s in that role that he joined with two other authors, Kevin Maney and Jeffrey M. O’Brien to write Making the World Work Better: The Ideas that Shaped a Century and a Company an examination of how IBM has contributed to the evolution of technology and the modern corporation over the past 100 years.
He joined the show recently (listen here) to talk about this book, IBM's lessons for individuals, companies and the world and the new opportunities for businesses to tell their story to their stakeholders.
Steve, thanks for joining the show.
Great to be with you!
Big day today.
Yes and we’re celebrating.
And it is a global celebration. I understand it started with the opening of the markets today and then there are events happening globally. Is that right?
Yeah, IBM operates in a 170 companies. And in many of those countries there are events in those offices.
That’s fantastic. And you are serving on a panel this afternoon?
The main event of the day is a big event at IBM’s Yorktown labs. And there’s a lab there and a big parking lot there. And they’ve erected a gigantic tent and about 1000 IBMers and their guests are going to be in it. And there’s a whole array of speeches and ther are panels. There’s an innovation panel and there’s a panel about the book. And I’m one of the three authors and we’re going to be up there with John Iwata, who’s our senior vice-president.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to be involved in this project?
I have been a journalist for 30 years. And the last 20 of those 30 years, I was a technology journalist. And I worked at a bunch of publications including BusinessWeek, and things like that.
I had covered IBM in a semi, sorta, way for many years and it was during the last 5 years of my journalism career that it was one of the companies that I covered as a regular part of my job. I was at BusinessWeek and it was not doing well. It was sold by McGraw-Hill to Bloomberg and rebranded and recast and all that kind of stuff.
I took the opportunity to leave the company. I looked around at the opportunities around me. And one of the most attractive was to come to work for IBM as a writer and videographer about new communications, new forms of communications.
That was a great opportunity. And little did I know, I took 2 days of orientation and I came into my office and I was invited to attend a meeting. I think it was the next day.
And that meeting was about the centennial planning. It was about the content that would go into the centennial: whatever would be published or would go in the video, you know the whole array of ways you could communicate. I was invited into that group.
And it wasn’t a formal plan to do a book. But in that first meeting we looked around and said:
“We should do a book.”
And that was the beginning of the process.
You covered IBM from afar as a journalist for many years. And you are now part of the IBM family as a communications strategist. What has been your greatest discovery about IBM and its culture since joining the company and beginning this project?
Well, you know what’s interesting? I covered IBM closely for 5 years. I knew as much about it as any journalist. But, when you get inside a big complicated organization like this you discover that there’s a lot that you didn’t know.
I wouldn’t say there was any crazy surprises. But, the one thing I did discover, that I didn’t know, was how kind of disciplined the organization is. It’s driven, despite the fact that it’s big and sprawling, it doesn’t ...to me it feels big but it doesn’t feel like it’s loose. It feels kinda like a well-oiled machine with a lot of...it doesn’t operate just because it has a lot of leaders and a lot of strong leaders and a lot of structure, a lot of opportunities for people down in the organization to influence the organization.
It’s not like the Army. But it is a very well-crafted and very well-run organization that doesn’t sputter; doesn’t miss too many things.
Was there one achievement of IBM that surprised you for its ongoing impact?
Well. IBM has been involved in many of the big important things over the past 100 years.
The one that I would point to that has had an impact that has lasted a very long time is the social security system. Now, that legislation was set up in the 1930’s by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And at the time, there was nothing like it in the US. It was a big complicated system. It had to penetrate to all the workplaces in order to be connected to this system.
And it was much more complex project than had ever been contemplated by a government. It was certainly a much more complex data-gathering and assembling and using project of all-time.
IBM had invested, despite the early part of the Great Depression, IBM kept investing and kept advancing its technology. And by the time the bid came up, it was the only company that had the capability of taking on this kind of project. It didn’t have all the answers yet. But there was confidence that it would have the answers and be able to build a big complicated system.
We could look at the system and see today the profound impact the social security system has had on the American people and on the country. It has been one of the rocks of our society and it continues to be.
Thank you.
Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. The phrase was reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And she asks:
What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?
What was your reasonable aspiration, collectively and individually, with writing this book?
Well, together we talked about it over a number of months as we were preparing the book.
A lot of corporations do publish books about themselves, usually coffee-table books, something that’s very positive, self-praise, that kind of thing.
But, we didn’t want to do that kind of thing. Our bosses didn’t want to do it. We, the authors, didn’t want to do it.
We wanted to do something that was really credible. A book of ideas that would give useful lessons to IBMers and anybody else who would listen or read about what it requires for an organization to survive and thrive so long.
The lessons, you could apply them to company, you could apply them to country, you could even apply them to an individual. There was the sense that by looking at, by studying the ideas of how it interacted with the community that you would really be able to come up with some important and impactful information. That was our prize that we kept our eyes on throughout the process.
What does that say about IBM’s culture and leadership that at this moment, one of the greatest milestones, they wanted you to go back and look at all the laundry, clean and dirty, and share it with everyone in the company and the world?
I think it’s an unusual approach. When you think about what is the environment today, we’ve got an environment, when we started this project it was even worse as we were recovering from a global financial calamity and we still are, we’re not out of the woods yet. But a global financial calamity and a sense of almost chaos and fear. At the same time, businesses and business leaders were in ill-repute. Ok?
So, I think in a sense, and I don’t know if this was the intention of the leaders of communications at IBM, but it was certainly my intention to say:
“Hey. Here’s some examples that can give people hope, that can help them get through very rough times. Because IBM has done it again and again, has been faced with very difficult times and has been able to come out of it.”
How will you measure the success of this project? What metrics will you use?
Well, you know the book has been given or will be given to more than 400,000 IBMers around the world. And in addition to enjoying reading they will at least get something out of it and will bind the company together.
When you think about books, I’ve written several books, and when I was writing my first book my editor told me:
“Guess what the average sales of a business book are in America? 2500 copies.
So, this is 420,000 copies being sent out. And in addition many other copies are being bought. We follow it on Amazon and even though it’s not on the bestseller’s list but it’s selling reasonably well. And certainly better than I expected. And when I say “better than expected” that’s not to denigrate the value of it. But I didn’t know if it would get publicity and word-of-mouth, and if people would really start to appreciate it and read it in that way.
We’ve had some media attention and some reviews and things like that. And on social media, we’ve had people giving us good positive feedback.
Do those 420,000 copies sent to IBM employees, do those not count towards sales for bestsellers?
Bestsellers only count those sales that have gone though distribution channels.
Even so, I’m guessing that this is a $10 million expense or investment. Give or take.
I have no idea.
And I’m thinking:
Why? Why are they incurring this cost? What are they investing in when they deliver this book to over 400,000 global employees?
Apart from the amount which I have no idea about, here’s why it’s a good investment.
So, IBM is a company with operations in 170 companies. A lot of employees in emerging markets because that’s where a lot of the sales are. A lot of the employees and I won’t hazard a guess at what percent, but a very high percent of the employees have been with company for 5 years or less.
So, in a sense, the book introduces the company to its employees, And with their shared knowledge, it’s almost like a shared experience, it knits together the employees of this company.
So, I think you get a tremendous benefit there. It’s pride. It’s part of being in a community. And there’s also the lessons learned about how to be successful that goes way beyond pride and goes into community.
“Here’s what I need to do everyday to be a successful person and help IBM be successful. “
Are their any follow-up collaborative projects planned with the employees after they’ve received it? I’m not thinking pop-quizzes but organizing ideas on the meaning of this legacy, how to sustain and expand it.
Absolutely!
One thing we’re doing is we’re creating a discussion guide. A lot of books have these. And there’s a move afoot to have a lot of managers use the discussion guide and have a little meeting, almost like a book club. Have the employees read the book and discuss the core ideas in it. Of course, the manager is free to highlight whatever core ideas are most important.
But, even beyond that, the book and the whole centennial is seen as an important way of communicating internally. You know IBM sees its employees as its brand ambassadors. They represent the company every day in the way they behave, they think and the way they act in society.
The book is yet another tool that helps tell IBMers what’s expected of them and how to express themselves.
Two things you’ve said, well a lot of things you’ve said catch my attention, but two things catch my attention at the moment. You mentioned ‘employees are looked at as brand ambassadors. Word-of-mouth evangelists for the company in their surrounding communities.
And you also talked about one of your big discoveries after joining IBM was how many opportunities existed for employees to influence the organization.
And what I'm hearing is that IBM does a tremendous job of inspiring and engaging employees. Employee engagement is big topic today mainly because no one seems to do it ery well.
You’re an employee. And you’ve probably worked at companies where employee engagement wasn’t so lively.
What does IBM do differently that offers these opportunities to influence, to be brand ambassadors; that’s really a volunteer position.
Well, one thing they do that is very ingenious is for most of this decade IBM has big online events called JAMS. And these Jams are typically about innovation. Once they did a jam about values, about company values.
They’re these big huge jams that are about big broad things that everybody in the company is invited to participate. Other times there are smaller jams that are about specific sorts of things. Last year there was a jam for the people in the HR function, which is about 3000 people worldwide, to think about what will the organization and work be like in the future? How does the HR function need to change to embrace that?
These jams go on for 2 or 3 days. There is some initial material that is presented.And there are some moderators with discussions. But, people are encouraged to come in and get involved in the discussions.
This isn’t just people talking to each other. The top executives are there. A top executive will make comment and a person will respond to it. And an executive will ask them for more. Something like that.
It truly is a flattening of the organization and putting everybody out there.
These things have been very good. They really helped reset the values where the idea was:
" We want to have these come from within, from below, and let them bubble up from within the organization rather than a tablet and here are the commandments;”
That kind of thing.
Also some great innovation ideas, some environmentally-oriented innovations and businesses have come out of this.
One of the things that gave rise to the current company strategy, which is the Smarter Planet strategy using technology to make all the systems in the world work better...that came from one of the innovation games a few years ago.
These are not just feel-good exercises though they do make people feel good. They are true participative crowd-sourcing phenomena. They have been very successful for the company.
Excellent. Thank you.
You talk about, in the book, Tom Watson, Sr. the founding Chairman/CEO of IBM and his iconic slogan of Think. He coined this slogan in 1914 at the beginning of the industrial/manufacturing era, long before the service and knowledge economies, here in the US.
What did this one word, this one iconic slogan, signify about his vision for not only the company, but our economy and our culture as well?
When he came to IBM in 1914, just three years after it was founded, he had a different vision for the company than was what a lot of corporate executives saw and thought at the time. A lot of the corporate executives were really focused on exploiting natural resources, or being capital firms. Or they were industrial firms and they were interested in investing in plant and equipment to maximize the manual labor.
Those were the sources of industries and value creation.
So, Watson saw things differently. He saw, even though IBM was in the machine-manufacturing business, the most important thing that would sustain it through time was the knowledge that the company was able to create. The knowledge and skills it was able to inculcate in it s employees through training and education.
That idea that it’s knowledge that is one of the great resources in business was a very important, a bold stroke, a very important concept. It was one that he was one of the people that really led to this evolution in the company and the economy. That’s where people recognize the value of the knowledge worker and the knowledge corporation.
You’ve heard of the post-industrial society which was first conceived in the 1950’s -’60’s and has really come to be as people had predicted. He foresaw a lot of that. His ideas got a lot of that going. He was a catalyzing figure.
Will this slogan of Think survive as we see a lot of emphasis on returning to our country's manufacturing roots?
Well, no matter what a business does, the value of the thinking around the products, around the development of the products, the way the business is done, the business model, the thinking has become ever more of the value. You can see that often in the product-oriented business that there are a lot of businesses that have a prodct that does pretty much the same thing. Right?
So, being able to be innovative, to find the new usefulness in the new feature, the new way to market, the new markets for products...all that is around the thinking.
The information gathering, the use of the information is going to be a differentiating factor that makes a company more competitive.
And for the next 40 years, to the mid-50's Thomas Watson, Sr., , as you wrote followed a process of discovery, with many missteps but with more successes --- translating these gut impulses into policies and practices...and the then radical notion of an intentionally created corporate culture.
I’m going to scale this question back. Somehow, I’m thinking, the reason IBM has been able to survive and even thrive was he was able to scale this entire process from one man to an entire company of leaders who could follow a process of discovery, with many missteps but with more successes ---- translating these gut impulses into policies and practices...and the then radical notion of an intentionally created corporate culture.
Would that be correct?
Absolutely. At the core of corporate culture is a small set of shared beliefs about what motivates, what animates the company. In the case of the early days of IBM, there were three that really evolved from Watson, Sr.’s experience in life. They were:
- A dedication to customer service.
- Respect for the individual.
- A dedication to doing everything in a superior fashion.
Those things were things that he believed in. Once again, he didn’t put them on a tablet for awhile.
But, his son, Thomas Watson, Jr., who succeeded as President and CEO him made a marvelous speech in 1962 at Coulmbia University and he said that he looked back on the first 50 years of IBM’s success and said:
“ I think that the core thing here and the core lesson for other companies is that you have to have these core beliefs. “
And he said:
“Secondly, I think you need to be willing to change everything else about the company except those beliefs to respond to the changes in the business environment.”
So, it’s like your foundation are these beliefs. It’s not that we’re in this business or we make this product. It’s about telling people your beliefs.
And ultimately being able to back it. 100 years of IBM and those core beliefs. We have a set of beliefs now that are similar and overlapping. When you look back on it, what ties the company together was it was about making the world work better. And ultimately, you can look at how you do that and you do that with a dedication to customer service, the respect for the individual and all that kind of stuff.
I guess I would say the company had a purpose and it was even more important than the core beliefs. But it was part of it, it was related to it; it was unstated at the time; but one of the core beliefs has always been about making the world better.
I think it’s interesting that you talk about how the company is built on these core beliefs and everything can change but these core beliefs. And, I’m thinking that times change but so do intentional practices.
What practices built the corporate culture in say the 60’s that are no longer applicable today. And vice versa?
The 1960’s, the things that IBM did in the 1960’s and the things they do today are very similar. When I look at the 1960’s IBM introduced the System 360 mainframe. And to do that, the company had to obsolete all of its products and the structure of its business to come out with a whole new line of computers that shared a lot of the same technologies and made it easier for customers to build and grow. And they wouldn’t have to throw out one system and buy another. They could build their programs and use them as the grew up and got bigger.
So, he was paying attention. He took a risk with IBM. But he was paying attention to the customer. I think that is something that IBM remembers and does today.
The other thing is that in the ’60’s, IBM was instrumental in providing technology for the US space program and for NASA for the first launches all the way up to Apollo 11. It has technologies in the space ships for a long time. That was an example of the company seeing a big complicated challenge and seeing the customer and going in and helping the customer invent whole new areas of science and getting things done.
That again is an example of what IBM does today and there is nothing about what IBM was doing in the ’60’s that is obsolete now.
IBM had a near-death experience in the 1990's. Being a casual observer of IBM I have this impression it came from 3 possible sources: APPLE and the MAC, IBM's creation of the PC and the huge amount of change that brought to their doorstep. You have a much closer, data-driven understanding of that time. What were the causes?
I would say the main cause was it was very difficult to have a big company that is so tremendously successful at doing a certain thing to then have that company recognize that it has to change. That all those methods and ways of thinking really aren’t going to be sustainable and then execute the change.
IBM, they had a business that was built on the success of mainframe system, a proprietary system. IBM made all the parts to it. They had a certain way of going to market and it was very successful.
Along came some different ways of computing. the mini-computing period, then the micro-computing period. The period where PCs became so prevalent; a computer on everybody’s desk. And then ultimately connected to a network.
Those were very important trends and IBM participated in them. But, in fact, pioneered some; they created the first PC designed for business use.
In spite of all that the world was changing. the company was not able to change fast enough. It lost, when it’s mainframe business went into a steep decline it was caught flat-footed. At first it could not respond fast enough.
I would say those were the main reasons. I would also say there’s a bureaucratic malaise as well. There was a lot of people that were inwardly focused on not focused so much on the customer as they were on their own success and succeeding within the organization. And it slowed things down.
Did this reflect a drift away from these core principles we just listed for creating an enduring culture?
There was a complacency. You’ve probably heard the phrase:
“Nobody loses their job for buying IBM”
And that was the way it was in large corporations. IBM was the safe bet. And some of the IBM people became accustomed to that, complacent about that, and they were not attentive enough to their customers’ needs.
“We’re the best. We got the mainframe they need.”
Well, the customer was saying
“We need other things.”
But IBM wasn’t listening.
Your book lists 5 steps for managing change in large-scale systems. You have an acronym for them called SMUBA. What does SMUBA stand for?
We pronounce it SMOOBA.
SMUBA stands for a taxonomy, a way of thinking, for how a big complicated problems are taking on by business or society. SMUBA was conceptualized by one of my co-workers, Jeffrey O’Brien.
SMUBA stands for Seeing, Mapping, Understanding, Believing and Acting.
He recognized that that was a sound way of how humans at their best solved complicated problems.
He used that, the SMUBA structure, as a convenient way of talking through the whole process of solving problems and making progress ultimately.
In some ways, it’s common sense. When individuals make a big decision that’s the way they do it. I think he was able to use this conceptual framework to go into depth on each of these steps. Go into some wonderful examples of how people solve problems.
The other thing that is different is you could say:
“ Well, oh people have been using this Technique for a long time."
And they have.
But what’s different now, is that with technology we have the means of gathering much more information whether it’s sensors or just various techniques for gathering information. And then because of the ubiquitous networking, we’re able to gather the information from wherever it is and take to wherever we need to store it and analyze it.
And, then we have analytics that are increasingly able to see the patterns in the data, understand the information, understand what’s happening real-time, right when it’s happening.
All of these advances in technology are really about making, helping us understand how the world works just with much more clarity and much more quickly than we ever could before. So, the process of making progress is always hard but it is easier now. We know more and we can make better decisions.
When did SMUBA join the practice and lexicon of IBM's culture?
Jeffrey O’Brien, my co-author, came up with it as part of the book. I think what you’d say now is that IBMers, who are learning from the book, some of them have taken that taxonomy and using it and helping them think through their jobs and how the organization can function better.
You’ve worked in a number of organizations. What does IBM do better with these 5 steps of SMUBA than any other company?
If I was to point to one of them I would point to believing. We talked about the core beliefs of the company, how that’s the foundation of the culture. That’s what makes the company sustainable.
Excellent. I was wondering which one you would choose.
We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama's daily news briefing includes an item on you, your co-authors and this book. He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.
Steve, he says. We're facing as a country some shifts, we seem to be behind the curve; we’re reacting; we’re counterpunching, to them. Some of the ideas you chronicle in your book are core to our identity as a nation, a culture. And vice versa. Could you come to the White House some time next week? I want to hear your thoughts on how we . Maybe we can talk about three things we as a nation can do to get out in front of these shifts and maintain our core culture.
What would you tell him those three things would be? Or what would IBM say those three things are?
Well, first the importance of innovation. America is a country that has had a tremendous amount of success. And, for a bunch of decades because of the collapse of the rest of the world at the end of the 2nd world war it has tremendous advantages, economic advantages and wealth advantages over other countries. I think we now can see that there are a lot of countries in the world that are dynamic and have the potential to develop a lot of wealth and power.
The US cannot be complacent. We can almost see it as IBM in the mainframe era. So, the US cannot be complacent.
To be innovative, it needs to know how to change.
I would say if the government provides the citizens with the tools and freedom to innovate and the encouragement, then that would be step 1.
Secondly, I think the government has to invest itself for the long term. You can’t just be a cheerleader and hope that good things will happen. A government has to help those things happen.
And that’s not, some people will say that’s industrial planning and you can’t pick winners and things like that. It’s not about picking winners. It’s about helping to promote the kinds of things the leaders see as important. I would point to, right now, alternative technologies for its importance to the economy and to geo political situation in the US. I would say investing for the long term.
Finally, I would say Have a Global View. IBM when it was started it was a national company. It was just inthe US. The early leaders wanted to become international. And they rapidly started doing business in other countries. And in the mid-centruy, the 50’s it became a multinational company. It had such strength around the world that it could have mini or smaller versions of itself in a bunch of companies where everything was done there. Then ultimately it became a global company where it sells products in many markets, IBM workers labor in many markets, that whole kind thing.
I would say having a global view and not a national view. Having a global view and obviously we have our national interests and other countries havetheir national interests and some don’t conflict very much with ours; others do. But for those where we don’t have serious conflicts the US should see them not as rivals, so much, but as partners.
It might even be instructive to see them as customers. Your customer isn’t something you give everything to; you do everything they want. You have to satisfy them.
You have to have value, you have to provide value to them. I think that’s a way nations could see each other as well. There is mutual security case; there’s open-markets where everybody can thrive.
At the core of this is the global economy is not a zero-sum game. We don’t lose because somebody wins. Right?
Even with China. You look at China and the U.S...both benefitting from each other’s existence. We’re huge economic allies. You think of China as your supplier and customer and think of it that way and you try to be a good customer and a good supplier.
Your background has been as a journalist, a business journalist for the last 20 years. Journalism is the 4th estate in our democracy, separate but equal, intimately attached but kept at arms length. Now, you have joined the leader in that same industry covered for the last 20 years; you are inside that family. How does that change your role as a journalist and documentarian?
Well, it certainly changed my role. It doesn’t change what I actually do day-to-day that much. My job here is to find out things, to find out what is happening, and to tell those stories. I’m in a sense, I still seek the truth.
My definition of a journalism is the search for truth by professionals. Right? I still seek the truth but I am not a journalist. I am an advocate for an ideas of a company. I’m not out there flogging the ideas of its products and services. But I am an advocate for the company’s ideas.
I would not do that unless I shared those values and ideas. I would not advocate for an idea I did not believe in.
So, I’m able to do a lot of the kind of work I did before. I do deep research. I learn about things. I tell stories in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s a book, a blog posting and everything in between.
I recognize it’s different than journalism. At its highest calling, journalism is protecting democracy, it’s protecting society, it’s protecting values...things like that; it’s not just reporting the news. The truth is a necessary piece of a successful republic.
I’m not doing that. I’m doing something similar. I’m talking about the pieces necessary for a successful business and economy.
Another great answer. I liked the point you brought up seeking truth and being an advocate for ideas. If you seek the truth you should find the data to support the ideas that arise from truth.
The book is about achievements. But one of IBM's achievements is its ability to fail regularly and incorporate failure into its process of reinvention. Were its failures off limits with this project?
No. Absolutely not. Every significant mistake or mishap that IBM had is reflected in this book. Nothing was off-limits.
I’ll point to, you talked about learning from things, look at the course of the PC industry. IBM in 1991 changed the way it did business to come out with a personal computer for the business market. Not to make everything for itself, but to seek business partners that could provide key pieces of the product. And 2 of the most significant partners in the business were Intel who provided the micro-processors and MIcrosoft that provided the operating system for the PC.
Now, you can look back and somebody might say:
“IBM. They were so stupid. Why on earth did they invite these other companies in? And then Microsoft and Intel may more profits at the end of the day.”
You can criticize them. You can say:
“IBm saw that the world was changing. They saw that a single company couldn’t do everything anymore. And in fact, an ecosystem of companies would be much more successful and powerful than any single company could be.”
Now, in the end IBM didn’t get the big profits. It didn’t understand the nuances of how this ecosystem could work. Who could predict? Nothing like this had happened before.
What they did realize was the power of the ecosystem. Since then you have seen the company embrace the whole idea of the open-standards; that’s why the internet is so successful, it’s all open-standards. Right? It has embraced the idea of open-source software which has become a very powerful thing in the world where a large number of people in companies contribute and share the results. Open-source has been a huge factor in IBM’s success and it learned some important lessons that have shaped the way it has behaved since and contributed to our success.
This book, this project, your role seems like a logical next step for companies. Every company that survives and thrives does so by examining itself. The story is discovered and told. but it's telling goes no farther than financial reports. I don't really include press releases. Do you see more companies taking this step. taking an in-depth look at the story they create everyday with their primary stakeholders? And telling it as a story, not a report or a release?
I think increasingly companies will see the need for communicating directly with their constituents. That would include their customers, their business partners, their employees. You know, when you look at the world of communications for businesses today you have advertising on one end and traditional media on the other.
And then you have this opportunity to communicate directly. IBM’s done it with the book. We do some advertising that has within in it some important ideas, we express ideas we think are important for a large number of people. Even though it’s advertising it’s also a direct communication; it’s about ideas. We do it with video. We do it with our blogs.
I think increasingly companies will do this. And one reason is this. Traditional media along those business models really is lines is not working anymore. Organizations having those resources and the time and the spae to present in-depth stories that really penetrate to the truth and have a lot of analysis and facts in them; you don’t see that in the media anymore.
If a company wants to see that, facts and an in-depth analysis, companies are going to have to do that themselves more and more. It’s direct communication.
Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that; I just quote him every show. You're a leader, a journalist. That makes you an avid reader, I suspect. What are you reading these days?
I read a lot of books for this centennial project. I read about 30 books. It was great to really learn about the evolution of the 20th or the modern corporation in more depth.
The book I’m reading right now is a book by George Friedman. It’s called The Next Decade. He has a consulting firm. It’s consulting about geopolitical matters. This book looks at the next decade and the world and looks at the US role. And basically it says we have this Republic and it’s still a great organization and a beacon to the world. And at the same time, even though we didn’t seek to be an empire we are an empire. We have to behave as enlightened empires behave.
Obviously, the US has made some geo-political blunders with all these wars. There’s a sense that we can’t afford these moving forward and we have to be much wiser.
I highly recommend that book.
We started this show asking what was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with co-authoring this great book.
What is IBM's moving forward?
IBM, when you look back, it turns out the things that has knit it together in all these 100 years...that it was always about making the world work better. And today, IBM’s strategy is explicitly that. It’s all about making a smarter planet and using all kinds of ideas and technologies to make human made and natural systems work better even in how they interact together.
The Smarter Planet is the thing that moves IBM forward and synchs it up with the aspirations of its interests and its business partners and the governments in the countries where it does business.
That’s the vision of IBM moving forward. And if it can execute, keep its eye on that goal, I see no reason why this company shouldn’t thrive for many more reasons.
I know as a publicly traded company you're discouraged from making forward-looking statements. Still, I'll ask: What is one future achievement you see IBM reaching that signifies that?
I’ll give you one. So, one of the great inventions of the 20th century was the transistor which led ultimately to the semiconductor and microprocessors and all these chips that do so much of the calculating and brain work of the computing industry and even beyond in the communications industry.
The core idea of the transistor and the semiconductor, the physics of it, is coming to a point where it cannot advance as rapidly. You can see the end of life of this idea.
So, IBM’s engineers in Yorktown Heights and Zurich and Santa Clara Valley and elsewhere are working on something they call The Next Switch. It’s the idea that you have to come up with new devices, new concepts, that will make it possible for us to put more and more machine intelligence in a smaller and cheaper package.
This incredible progress that that computer industry has made...can continue and even accelerate. And IBM is in as good a position of any company in the world to invent the next switch.
Where can we find you on the web?
Well, I blog on IBM’s main blog called A Smarter Planet.
I’m on Facebook as Steve Hamm
And then I’m on Twitter at SteveHamm31.
Thanks for being on the show. You’ve written a great book. I hope everybody goes out and gets it.
