Quotes & Sayings About Ibm

Microsoft went into orbit because it had a booster rocket attached to it called IBM. — Bill Gates

It's not easy to remember, but IBM was the computer industry when I was growing up. You loved 'em. You hated 'em. You knew what they were doing. They had set a standard for mainframes. They also set a standard for great sales focus and heavy product R & D. — Bill Gates

IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues. — Ginni Rometty

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Even IBM can't stand in the way of progress ... for more than a decade. — Craig Bruce

These guys are fakes. All they've got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so proud of, while sticking their hanse up their skirts. And when they graduate,they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who've never read Marx and have kids they give fancy names to that are enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial complex? Don't make me laugh! — Haruki Murakami

I have always thought of myself as an inventor first and foremost. An engineer. An entrepreneur. In that order. I never thought of myself as an employee. But my first jobs as an adult were as an employee: at IBM, and then at my first start-up. — Aaron Patzer

It's the first company to build the mental position that has the upper hand, not the first company to make the product. IBM didn't invent the computer; Sperry Rand did. But IBM was the first to build the computer position in the prospect's mind. — Al Ries

What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team, but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

When a manufacturing company in Spain looks to IBM for a solution to a problem, they expect us to bring the best of IBM worldwide to it, not just the experience of IBM Spain. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I want to take IBM back to its roots. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it. — Steve Jobs

RPX's current members include such giants as Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, HTC, IBM, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Oracle, Samsung, Sony, T-Mobile, and Verizon. — Anonymous

And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. — Michio Kaku

If the DHS insists, as bureaucracies are apt to do, that open-source must be certified via a sanctioned, formal process, it will interfere with the informal process of open-source itself. It seems to me the DHS is trying to turn an open-source development project into a Microsoft (or IBM or Oracle) software development project. And we know what that means: more, not fewer, errors
security and otherwise. — Mark Hall

Like IBM, the company [Microsoft] seems to have been spooked by the federal antitrust action against it and became increasingly sclerotic and less inventive. — Stephen Manes

IBM isn't investing billions of dollars every year into research and development - and winning more patents than our top 10 competitors combined for more than a decade - as an academic exercise. But research is now being driven much more by what people need rather than just by what is possible. — Samuel J. Palmisano

In 1951, the Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills published a study titled White Collar: The American Middle Classes.26 Like Ronald Coase, Mills was fascinated by the rise of large managerial corporations. He argued that these firms, in their pursuit of scale and efficiency, had created a vast tier of workers who carried out repetitive, mechanistic tasks that stifled their imagination and, ultimately, their ability to fully participate in society. In short, Mills argued, the typical corporate worker was alienated. For many, that alienation was captured in the warning printed on the Hollerith punch cards that, thanks to IBM and other data processing firms, became ubiquitous symbols and agents of bureaucratized life during the 1950s and 1960s: "Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate. — Moises Naim

We know unequivocally that the traditional MBA curriculum for running large companies like IBM, GM and Boeing does not work in startups. In fact, it's toxic. — Steven Gary Blank

If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. — Warren Buffett

Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new. — Thomas J. Watson

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like ... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. — Lou Gerstner

A promising junior executive of IBM was involved in a risky venture for the company and managed to lose over $10 million in the gamble. It was a disaster. When Watson called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, 'I guess you want my resignation?' Watson said, 'You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million educating you! — Warren G. Bennis

I later became more interested in equal rights for women in the work place because of what was happening at IBM. One of the women at Remington Rand had previously been a system service girl for IBM during the war. After a system was installed, a system service girl would go out and show the users how it worked. She was the liaison between the users and the computer company. She was married and had been fired to make room for a returning veteran. When the war ended, IBM rehired all of its former employees who had left to join the military, then fired all of the married women with jobs that could be filled by men. — Jean Jennings Bartik

And then lo and behold IBM, Apple and Motorola took an ad in all the newspapers, double page ad, and said, announcing the chip that they were now able to manufacture it and that they were going to kill Intel. — Arthur Rock

I give permission
for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil. — Douglas Crockford

You know, IBM was almost knocked out of the box by other types of computer software and manufacturing. — Roy Romer

Why IBM? We have tremendous expertise. One of the reasons we can drive phenomenal efficiency around the world is because we've made IBM an e-business. — Samuel J. Palmisano

I already have it, but a good keyboard is invaluable when you spend a lot of time typing. My favorite one is the ancient IBM Model M I have at home. — Markus Persson

The typical project design time for a large company like IBM - and they keep track of this - is a little over four years. — Bill Gates

At IBM, if we kept our same leadership for 36 years, we'd be bankrupt. — Scott Howell

It was an impressive achievement, of course, and a human achievement by the members of the IBM team, but Deep Blue was only intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better. — Garry Kasparov

My father had to flee from what is today Pakistan when he was a child, and he became a manager at IBM, and any item of consumption he would acquire was a direct measurement of his success in life. But that same equation wasn't going to work for me - I was quite clear about that in my early teens. — Tino Sehgal

The quality most desirable in a CEO? According to a global survey conducted by IBM of 1,500 top executives in sixty countries: creativity. — Steven Kotler

IBM has had a long partnership with Siebel, JD Edwards and Peoplesoft, so from a partner perspective, this is a good move by both sides. This agreement reflects the reality of what customers expect for their investment, support and openness. Oracle really needed to do this for Websphere, but it opens up tremendous opportunities for both companies. — Stephen Graham

My only explanation for our cheeky ambition is this: Being surrounded by pet-supply e-tailors worth more than IBM has a way of getting your sense of what's possible all out of whack. The old millennium was dying; a better one was on its way. We were in our mid-twenties, and we had no idea what we were doing. But we knew we loved books. And so we set out to write them. — Chris Baty

Daniel Wolpert, of Cambridge University, is fond of pointing out that IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer is capable of beating a grand master at the game of chess, but no computer has yet been developed that can move a chess piece from one square to another as well as a 3-year-old child. — Stuart Firestein

If joining IBM was commitment, not employment, and the company engaged in something more than business, it had a right to demand of its men unconditional loyalty, Watson believed. — Thomas Watson

We depend on you to do the right thing; right for both you and the company. It is no exaggeration to say that IBM's reputation is in your hands. — Buck Rodgers

I've been a Fellow in a number of companies: Xerox, Apple, Disney, HP. There are certain similarities because all the Fellows programs were derived from IBM's, which itself was derived from the MIT 'Institute Professor' program. — Alan Kay

The fashionable term now is "Big Data." IBM estimates that we are generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, more than 90 percent of which was created in the last two years.36 — Nate Silver

Historically, noted James Manyika, one of the authors of the McKinsey report, companies kept their eyes on competitors "who looked like them, were in their sector and in their geography." Not anymore. Google started as a search engine and is now also becoming a car company and a home energy management system. Apple is a computer manufacturer that is now the biggest music seller and is also going into the car business, but in the meantime, with Apple Pay, it's also becoming a bank. Amazon, a retailer, came out of nowhere to steal a march on both IBM and HP in cloud computing. Ten years ago neither company would have listed Amazon as a competitor. But Amazon needed more cloud computing power to run its own business and then decided that cloud computing was a business! And now Amazon is also a Hollywood studio. — Thomas L. Friedman

We think the managed security services opportunity is enormous and so we have been an active participant and probably the largest firm in this space outside of an IBM or EDS, which does large outsourcing contracts. — John W. Thompson

There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens. — Douglas Trumbull

IBM has taken a leadership role in this area and is prepared to be a technology partner with companies around the world to take advantage of these new developments. — John Patrick

There were movies to go see at the Gem, which has long since been torn down; science fiction movies like Gog with Richard Egan and westerns with Audie Murphy (Teddy saw every movie Audie Murphy made at least three times; he believed Murphy was almost a god) and war movies with John Wayne. There were games and endless bolted meals, lawns to mow, places to run to, walls to pitch pennies against, people to clap you on the back. And now I sit here trying to look through an IBM keyboard and see that time, trying to recall the best and the worst of that green and brown summer, and I can almost feel the skinny, scabbed boy still buried in this advancing body and hear those sounds. But — Stephen King

It's like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there's some fundamental technology shift, it's just over. — Steve Jobs

In 1996 or so, I bought my first home computer. It was some sort of IBM product. If I was some weird computer nerd, I would be able to tell you all about the ROM and RAM this machine had. All I know is that it was black when every other model was off-white. When I was perusing models with the sales guy who was blathering on and on about what it could do, all I could think was how much better the black would look in my home office than the ugly off-white. I'm that kind of nerd. — Jen Mann

Within IBM at that time, growing a beard without getting fired was an indisputable mark of technical genius. In — Gerald M. Weinberg

I was into the Mets because my Dad worked at IBM where he got free Mets tickets, so I was into the Mets ... then I got to 'Saturday Night Live' where my boss has unbelievable N.Y. Yankees tickets, so he invites us to the games. I'm going to all the games, so I might as well root for the team I'm gonna go sit with. — Jimmy Fallon

Gates has always understood Moore's Law better than anyone else in the industry. If you can make something run at all, get it out there -it may be slow and clunky, but hardware improvements will bail you out. If you wait until it's running perfectly on the hardware already in the field, it will be obsolete before it's released. This philosophy built Microsoft and is the main reason Microsoft won the war IBM declared back in the OS/2 days. — Jerry Pournelle

My big dream back then was to buy an IBM Selectric. I still have that dream. I really ought to buy a word-processor. Half the cabbies at Rocky own computers. They tell me they can write failed novels ten times faster on a PC. — Gary Reilly

At that time in IBM you had to wear a white shirt, dark pants and a black tie with your badge stapled to your shoulder or something," said Steve Bristow, an engineer. "At Atari the work people did counted more than how they looked. — Walter Isaacson

Twenty years ago rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for IBM. — George Will

IBM actually followed the recommendations and built a workplace where people can work. (We predict this company will go far.) — Tom DeMarco

That was an all-purpose IBM 3070. It took up half a room and still did not have enough capacity to do all the jobs demanded of it. — Frederik Pohl

While Steve's gadgets and computers drew the most attention, the software that made them go was every bit as important. Steve always said that Apple's primary competitive advantage was that it created the whole widget: the finely tuned symbiosis between the hardware and the software together defined a superior user experience. In the PC world, hardware and software technologies came from different companies that didn't always even get along, including IBM and the PC-clone manufacturers, Microsoft, and Intel. — Brent Schlender

When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.' — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

And the reason I came to IBM was I think - I always say at a really early age, I learned you've got to be passionate about what you do. No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices. — Ginni Rometty

I think everybody at IBM knows the early 1990s disaster, and it's in our fabric that you cannot miss the ship. — Samuel J. Palmisano

I had a working mother. She worked for IBM. My dad lived in another town - not very far away, but another town. So food was - I guess food was my friend. — John Schneider

You can't tell what's aboard a container ship. We carried every kind of cargo, all of it on view: a police car, penicillin, Johnnie Walker Red, toilets, handguns, lumber, Ping-Pong balls, and IBM data cards. — Christopher Buckley

The focus on context is growing. Leading firms such as Coca-Cola, Amazon, GE, IBM, Google, Hertz, Proctor & Gamble, Standard & Poor's, and AT&T have begun to use context to shape their offers. — Robert Docters

There are plenty of things I wish I'd known when I decided to quit my position at IBM and work on the idea that later became TaskRabbit. Maybe that's why one of the things I cherish most about being a founder and CEO is the opportunity to offer advice to new entrepreneurs. — Leah Busque

I am so sorry to hear of Asher's passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stubborn integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about Asher's always rejecting his manuscript when they were sent to him to referee. Asher said in effect, 'You should thank me. I am only trying to protect your reputation.' He often pretended to consult me, a fellow atheist, on matters of religious protocol.

{Charles H. Bennett's letter written to the family of Israeli physicist, Asher Peres} — Charles H. Bennett

The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time. — Charlie Munger

IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' to destroy the competition ... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor approaches the pot, he falls into the pit — John C. Dvorak

IBM was the original contractor for much of the computer interface design on the film. — Douglas Trumbull

Before I liked to write, I liked to type. I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. — Gabrielle Zevin

I was going to visit IBM for six months as a visiting scientist. Now, six months is a lot of time, so I came with a whole list of projects that I might want to work on. — Wietse Venema

It was a very big gamble. I lost my job in France, I received a job in which was extremely uncertain, how long would IBM be interested in research, but the gamble was taken and very shortly afterwards, I had this extraordinary fortune of stopping at Harvard to do a lecture and learning about the price variation in just the right way. — Benoit Mandelbrot

If Microsoft is the new IBM, Google is the new Microsoft - the defining company of the industry. — Mitchell Kapor

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. — Arthur Jensen

The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we're gunning for leadership. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Jolt is for Windows programmers. It's typical IBM PC: it goes in brown and comes out yellow. Mountain Dew is for Macintosh programmers: it goes in yellow and comes out yellow. It's WYSIWYP. — Guy Kawasaki

Technology is something we buy to sell to the customers. Ericsson, Nokia and IBM do technology for a living, so let's give it to them because they know best. It has made the business model of Bharti very, very sustainable. — Sunil Mittal

Mark my words, there will be a day that will come when you will all see many, many documents that will directly contradict IBM's current public posturing. — Darl McBride

At IBM, a corporation that embodied the ideal of the company man, the sales force gathered each morning to belt out the company anthem, "Ever Onward," and to harmonize on the "Selling IBM" song, set to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain. — Susan Cain

My dad used to work at IBM, so we used to get discounts on computers and stuff, and I did have a ThinkPad. — Jimmy Fallon

I've been a Mac guy for almost my entire adult life. I wrote my first college papers on a typewriter, but by the end of my freshman year - almost 20 years ago - I was on an IBM PC. Then, in 1984, I found the Mac, and I never looked back. — John Battelle

I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it. — Larry Wall

Compensation needs to be predominately performance-driven. If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything. — Lou Gerstner

I've been head of strategy at IBM and together with my colleagues built our five-year plan. My priorities are going to be to continue to execute on that. — Ginni Rometty

Kildall, the innovator, followed his passion for technical excellence and was shocked that IBM wouldn't follow him. Gates, the imitator, took his cues from IBM every step of the way, because he believed that following Big Blue was the smartest way to follow the money. — Lewis Schiff

I've got a distribution system that goes to 170 countries. If I acquire properly, you know, you may be successful in one or two countries, or one place; I can scale, and that's part of the value that IBM brings. — Ginni Rometty

IBM doesn't want its people to get frustrated and restless because it has them reaching for carrots they can't quit — Buck Rodgers

If Jobs and Wozniak had believed that IBM was the be-all and end-all, there would have been no personal computers. — Jimmy Maher

And so when I moved to IBM, I moved because I thought I could apply technology. I didn't actually have to do my engineer - I was an electrical engineer, but I could apply it. And that was when I changed. And when I got there, though, I have to say, at the time, I really never felt there was a constraint about being a woman. I really did not. — Ginni Rometty

It's fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn't make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, "Oh yeah, this stuff is good." — Larry Ellison

I realized much later in life that the reason this decision between MIT and IBM was so agonizing was because it wasn't really about choosing a career; it was about deciding who I was, which part of myself I wanted to be, and that's the hardest decision any of us has to make. — Mike Massimino

IBM is helping to greatly advance and expedite quality sampling while providing our project investigators peace of mind that the information they are gathering is securely stored and protected. — H.G.Wells

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. — Adam Osborne

IBM is a Monozukuri. — Mehmet Kececi

I remember having computers at my parents' house growing up. We had different desktop PCs, but my first laptop was an IBM ThinkPad laptop. It was big, bulky, slow and terrible. — Scott Michael Foster

In December 1989, my mother died very suddenly, and that sparked a re-evaluation of what I was doing, and I realized I was mediocre at everything. I was a mediocre IBM employee, I was a mediocre entrepreneur, I was a mediocre artist. I decided that, although my mom wouldn't be around to see it, I wanted to be great at something. — Jim McKelvey

ASAP has helped IBM take more than $150 million worth of Unix business from Sun since its inception. — James Larkin

If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years. — Steve Jobs

My cousin Elroy spent seven years as an IBM taper staring at THINK signs on the walls before he finally got a good idea: He quit. — Edward Abbey