The father-son struggle that helped ensure IBM's success

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/books/review/the-greatest-capitalist-who-ever-lived-ralph-watson-mcelvenny-marc-wortman.html

by benbreen • 3 years ago

41 13 3 years ago

nytimes.com

niccl• 3 years ago

no paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20231026105511/https://www.nytim...

CamperBob2• 3 years ago

Love the lead photo. That is just Kubrick AF.

marc_abonce• 3 years ago

The New York Times's official onion address also works without a paywall (or at least I haven't been blocked yet):

https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2l...

gumby• 3 years ago

The autobiography of Watson Jnr that Tim Wu mentions, "Father, Son and Company" really is an excellent read. I enjoyed it a lot and I've never liked IBM's hardware. It of course has a lot to say about the 360 (and how revolutionary it was), but also about management.

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/03/books/growing-up-at-big-b...

TMWNN• 3 years ago

Agreed on the autobiography's excellence. Among other things, Watson Jr. sadly recounts how he and his father drove to colleges around the Northeast US looking for one that would accept the son and his mediocre academic record (Watson was likely dyslexic, or had some other learning disability); Brown is the one that reluctantly does so.

Wartime service as a pilot was the first time Watson Jr. found himself good at anything, and he expected to stay flying until he was pulled back to IBM. He had built contacts in Russia during the war, and used that experience when serving as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union after IBM.

Aloha3• 3 years ago

I concur, strongly.

I read this biography and another one about Sr - and I found both of them to be compelling books

Animats• 3 years ago

There are several other biographies. There's the official one, "The Lengthening Shadow" (1962). There's the unofficial one, "Think; A Biography of the Watsons and IBM" (1969). Both were written when the major players were still alive.

Key point: both were really, really good at sales to businesses. IBM was a sales-driven company, where the salesmen were in charge.

num• 3 years ago

Interesting perspective and agree a good example of the Innovator's Dilemma. The IBM history is rife with innovation that is similar to much of what the tech industry is today, but what strikes me as the most important was the magic that happened in the mid-40s of IBM's Poughkeepsie Lab. So much happened in this period that were major catalysts but two struck me as the most important: the end of the war and leveraging code-breaking innovation (especially from those working in electronics) and a high-rank champion (Jr.) willing to embrace innovation (electronics). This all seemed to converge in the Poughkeepsie lab in short time and the rest, well, is history. There are same amazing books (https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...), declassified documents relating to the early IBM employees post-wartime, and so much more that really tell amazing and still relevant stories.

I find the more I learn of the early IBM transition to electronics, the more I see direct parallels to the modern startup world. It was seemingly a startup within a massive company with a monetary "umbrella" to help foster innovation, although likely not the first. Another motivator for the lab's success was how they had to demonstrate value with electronics well beyond a normal burden of proof (overcoming the Innovator's Dilemma). There's still a lot more to learn from their stories.

CRConrad• 3 years ago

It was seemingly a startup within a massive company

And then that kind of repeated itself with the origin of the IBM PC, didn't it?

Aloha3• 3 years ago

So I just finished this book, and it makes the claim at the end, that Watson died of assisted suicide after his stroke, which is an interesting revelation.

The father-son struggle that helped ensure IBM's success

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