Ibm Case

R.Taylor

MBA-605-60

September 10,2013

Quiz 5

Kaplan and Norton believed that sustainable competitive advantage, both near-term and long-term, requires organizations to exploit intangible assets that are not necessarily reflected in the financial measures. One of Kaplan and Norton assumptions that resonate is, “Innovation”. IBM invested $5 billion to develop the System/360 computer, the first family of products based of integrated semiconductor chip and offering interchangeability of components. The System/36O was the, biggest confidentially financed marketable project ever. This fundamental departure from the incremental innovation that portrayed early vacuum tube computers transformed the industry and set the leading design for decades to come. In the same time period, the company produced a series of related IT innovations, including one of the first English-like computer languages (FORTRAN), the hard disk, the floppy disk, the IBM supermarket checkout station, and an early version of the automatic teller machine. Another example of Kaplan and Norton belief that IBM uses was “Know Workers”, which donate value by what they know and by the communication they had to provide. Executives had large staffs and little direct participation in writing their own reports. They delivered demonstrations prepared by staff members during numerous pre-meetings, in which the staff worked to align positions and eliminate surprises. Armies of staff members attended executive meetings, lingering in hallways or in the case of very senior staff close seated behind their executive in the meeting room, armed with volumes of backup material. Prepared presentations dominated even informal meetings, and most executives had projectors built in all of their office furniture.

During the early 1990’s Gerstner had a problem the chair board wanted to break up the company, het went to the chair board to tell them his vision. He believed instead of a break up, it around by going to the...