IBM’s Extreme Innovation
by Miki SaxonThis is innovation week and today’s story is about a company that almost committed corporate suicide before changing its ways.
I’m talking about IBM.
If you’re old enough, or you like business history, you’ll remember how what started as one of the most innovative companies to ever exist turned inward, building up a stifling culture that dictated everything right down to the length of socks worn by its sales force.
The company trusted no, one including it’s own employees, and development was spread to different facilities so no one except a chosen few knew how product were developed or built.
IBM’s cultural turn around started with Lou Gerstner and has continued apace under current CEO Sam Palmisano.
In spite of the economy, IBM hasn’t cut its basic research staff numbering 2000 in the US and another 1000 around the world. It dwarfs Microsoft’s (1000) and leaves HP a distant third.
Its newest initiative is collaboration on a scale that’s never been seen.
I call it extreme innovation.
“IBM, meanwhile, is prowling the world to set up what it calls “collaboratories,” which match up its researchers with experts from governments, universities, and companies.” John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, says, “The world is our lab now.”
This is way beyond the open innovation other companies are doing “by making collaboration with outsiders an essential piece of its research strategy.”
Will it work? No one knows.
Is it a smart move? Yes, if your goal is to be a corporate leader decades from now.
Does it make sense?
The brain power to solve the world’s problems has no boundaries, transcending geography, race, religion and is gender neutral.
Is there a choice?
Image credit: hyku
