Skip to main content

IBM

As a student of corporate history, I gain an interesting perspective on the longevity of firms.  Very few firms in existence today were in existence 100 years ago.  One exception is IBM.  Warren Buffett has recently taken a large stake in IBM, which is testament to the fact that this firm is still very successful. 

Why has IBM been so successful?  There are at least three reasons.

1. It has innovated and responded to the needs of its customers – small, medium and large business enterprises.  It started out with punch card readers and counting machines, moved on to mainframes and PCs, and today it provides firms with business solutions, consulting and software. IBM was once the market leader and main innovator in the PC and laptop market, setting industry standards along the way. But it quickly realised that this was not going to be a profitable business in the long-run and that its customers (businesses) were going to need integrated software and consulting solutions to compete in an increasingly complex environment.  Today, it is known more for its business services and software solutions rather its computer hardware.

2. IBM has always placed great stress on having well-educated and highly-trained managers.  Good managers are essential if any business is to succeed.

3. I am a great believer in Armen Alchian’s argument that success is partially (or wholly) down to serendipity.  IBM tried something, and it worked because they just happened to have the right service or product at the right time for the right customer – the product or service was a success due to chance not managerial foresight.




Popular posts from this blog

How Valuable Are Connections?

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles, co-authored with my colleague Will Quinn , is forthcoming in August. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon , Barnes and Noble , Waterstones and Cambridge University Press . 

Money, Money, Money

In my copious spare time, I am a notaphilist (i.e., a collector of bank notes).  In the not too distant past, individual banks issued their own notes.  However, today, apart from in N. Ireland and Scotland, central banks around the world have a monopoly of the note issue in most economies.   At Feb. 2011, Northern Irish and Scottish banks had a staggering £1,900m and £3,500m of notes in circulation respectively.   As regular travellers across the Irish Sea realise, these notes are not legal tender.   What is special about banks in N. Ireland and Scotland that they can issue their own notes?  Simply, it is an accident of history.  As legislation was passed which centralised the note issue in England in the Bank of England, Scottish and Irish banks were given certain exemptions.  The result today is that these banks can issue their own notes. N. Irish and Scottish Banks, however, have to hold backing assets (i.e., Bank of England reserve...