Top 10 lessons from IBM’s first 100 years

IBM, which turned 100 this week, has come a long way from its roots as a manufacturer of mechanical calculators.

In corporate history terms IBM is still in short pants, however. Japan has the world's oldest corporations, with some businesses dating from the eighth century, and even here in the New World there are companies that have been in existence since the mid-1600s.

But what a century it's been. IBM was in at the start of the counting revolution that swept the business world and was one of the key drivers for the technology industry. The ability to use machinery to perform calculation quickly and flawlessly, as opposed to relying on a tired clerk working with pen and ink, revolutionised business, and ultimately society as a whole.

IBM has pioneered some of the world's biggest computing projects, and is still doing so with its work on machine learning and artificial intelligence. The company kick-started the enterprise PC revolution and has been a huge, and sometimes unwelcome, influence on the development of modern information technology.

So this week we'll look at what we can learn from IBM's first 100 years. The old adage from Spanish philosopher George Santayana that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" comes to mind, because one of the things that gives us great hope for the next Big Blue century is that the company is better than most at recognising its mistakes and learning from them.

 
Honourable Mention: Avoid presentations

Iain Thomson: IBM became infamous for the overuse of the presentation, and it's a lesson far too many organisations still haven't learned.

IBM was one of the pioneers of the business presentation, with its salesmen becoming early adopters of novel technology like overhead projectors to make their point. Later on software filled this role, and the company took to PowerPoint like a duck to water. It's still very difficult to have a meeting with someone from IBM without a presentation being made.

Presentations have a useful role in guiding the discussion, but IBM and others fell into the trap of letting the presentation be the discussion.

Things are getting better on this front, at IBM and elsewhere. But until companies learn how to use these tools properly they will become less and less effective.

Shaun Nichols: Things are getting a bit better, but companies are still falling into the trap of having every meeting and presentation be a wholly scripted slide show format. That sort of thing might work for keynote addresses, but not for weekly meetings or pitches.

Having done more briefings than I care to count in this job, I can say that few things will get a person to zone out like endless droning while slide after side flashes on the screen. When people feel they are being talked to, they don't feel involved in the conversation and they start to lose interest.

The best way to conduct a presentation or meeting is to keep an open dialogue. Rather than read from the script, make a few points and invite your audience to chip in with questions or comments. Even if nobody asks a question, it at least gets them thinking about the subject and keeps them engaged.

Honourable Mention: There's nothing wrong with being dull

Shaun Nichols: When you try to explain to people just what IBM does, you generally get a lot of yawns and glazed-over eyes.

The company doesn't make high-powered gaming devices like Sony or slick tablets and handhelds like Apple. But that doesn't mean IBM doesn't have an extremely solid and profitable business model.

As its very name indicates, IBM specialises in business machines – the type of hardware and software that people rarely notice, but rely on every day to do their jobs. In those areas, you don't want rapid development and seismic shifts in the market every few months. You want a system that will work, and will continue to do so over the years as your business grows and evolves.

This is why so many companies choose IBM, because it's less about flash and more about function

Iain Thomson: It's sad in a way, but very true, that IBM is a very dull place.

Maybe it's because IBM's been around for so long, or because management is stuck on the stuffy old East Coast while the hipsters flocked to Silicon Valley. When you hear the name IBM you just don't think of excitement.

In many ways this was deliberate. Presenting a sober, studious face helped reassure a lot of companies that they were in the hands of a respectable company, not some fly-by-night California operation. Companies liked the image, and it paid dividends, for a while.

In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell postulated that one of the reasons Steve Jobs, Woz, Ballmer and Gates all got to their positions in the PC industry was because they were the right age. They were just in their 20s, and so old enough to know what they were doing (broadly) but not so young they'd taken a corporate career with IBM and weren't willing to take a wild risk. In fact, Woz did work at HP, and offered the Apple designs to his employer, who turned them down.

Stuffy and sober has its upside, but it does mean the slightly wacky creative types often don't want to work there. IBM paid a price for its approach, even if it also had business benefits.