You cannot have companies where many of the largest ones lose money indefinitely without someone finally waving the white flag, and IBM is the most recent example of that.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You know, IBM was almost knocked out of the box by other types of computer software and manufacturing.
If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.
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.
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.
Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.
We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.
But if you look at WorldCom, which is the biggest failure to date, they grew dramatically, they were buying companies that were bigger than they were and they were doing it off inflated stock.
At IBM, if we kept our same leadership for 36 years, we'd be bankrupt.
The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.
IBM has a very solid business image.