THE 115-YR OLD STARTUP
- Jeremy Connell-Waite
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
I work for IBM. It's a really old company which was founded when the Titanic was still being built! The company is 115-years old tomorrow in fact. And when you’ve been in computing longer than any other company, you collect a lot of stories.
One of the best parts of my job is helping others to tell some of those stories in a relevant, optimistic and exciting way. I created this document (below) as a bit of a love letter to IBM’s past, mostly for other IBMers.
As IBM stock is at record highs, and the market capitalisation of the company has more than doubled over the last two years, it's fair to say that they stories IBM has been telling over the last 115-years have worked.
No matter where you work, if you want to understand where your company is going, and what makes it special, you need to know something of its past. Stories make up the DNA of an organisation. They give people a reason to believe in what you do, and they form the foundations of a company's growth. Stories celebrate your successes, but they also remind you of your failures, so you don’t get too carried away. The best stories make you proud to work where you work. And they inspire others to want to work with you.
When I look at the $8.3 billion IBM spent on research last year, or the 6 Nobel prize-winners who have graced IBM’s labs, I don’t just see “A Hybrid-cloud, AI and Quantum Company” – I see a company inventing technology that doesn’t exist yet. I see a company full of “Wild Ducks” – restless explorers and adventurers who are trying to make the world work a bit better.
It was difficult selecting just one story from each year of IBM’s illustrious past, but hopefully I’ve created a snapshot which shows you a side of the company that you’ve not seen before.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed curating it.
