Quote

The United States is a huge market, and once you get rolling, you can replicate that model over and over pretty easily. Your supply lines are taken care of. You don't have technicians to deal with. You've got your customer base.

We have 2 million users in the U.S. and about 13 million worldwide in more than 200 countries.

I do business in 170 countries; none of them is perfect. There is not even one country that I think of, and I am like, 'God, that did everything that I wanted it to do.'

We can learn from IBM's successful history that you don't have to have the best product to become number one. You don't even have to have a good product.

We have started something called the Corporate Services Corps. Now, it was modeled after the Peace Corps from long ago, the 1960s. And the idea was in this modern day and age, how do you get IBM'ers around the world to be global citizens? You know, globally aware, contribute, understand how to work in that environment, but do it on scale.

Apple has hundreds of stores around the world that are beautiful, and they have a distribution system and a staff of 40 or 50 people that will help you.

In terms of development of the company, the vast majority of our sales are in the Far East and we will expect to strengthen our activities there, perhaps even moving some of our engineering activities abroad.

The amazing thing about IBM is that it's a company where I have had 10 different careers - local jobs, global jobs, technology jobs, industry jobs, financial services, insurance, start-ups, big scale. The network of talent around you is phenomenal.

IBM has research and development; so do Microsoft and Nike and even Jose Andres. But there hasn't been enough R&D on feeding people in the Third World. This has to be part of the process; if not, we'll keep throwing money at the problem instead of investing in true solutions.