| In 1991, Denny Wainwright was a senior planner at IBM Corp.
in Boca Raton, FL. Wainwright was part of the small group working on a portable tablet computer: a pen-based system that permitted users to write on a screen, save the information and transfer it to other computers by a cable. The group was having trouble finding a name for the product. IBM had a strong preference for its computers to be designated by numbers, as if only machines that sounded like they had been invented by George Jetson would be taken seriously by customers. The company had deviated from this tradition when it started selling its desktop PC, calling it the IBM PC, but the policy was still almost sacrosanct. Even so, the members of Wainwright's group felt that a number was too impersonal for their tablet computer. Although many working on the project were young and more casual than the prototypical IBMer, Wainwright was a throwback to an earlier era at Big Blue. He was a gentle, formal man, invariably dressed in a suit and tie. At a meeting, Wainwright held up the small notepad he always carried. IBM used to issue the pads so employees could jot down to-do lists, or, better yet, earth-shaking ideas. The pad, which was designed to fit into a dress-shirt |
pocket, was bound in leather and embossed in gold with
the IBM motto, "Think." Displaying the little leather legacy of
IBM's past, Wainwright said, "Let's call it the Think pad." The
suggestion was more than a catchy bit of marketing. It connected the
tablet computer to the philosophical foundations of the company. By 1991, "Think" had become mainly a marketing mantra at IBM, but, for founder Thomas Watson Sr., it epitomized his devout rationalism. In 1915, Watson told employees: "All the problems of the world could be solved easily if men were only willing to think." Within a few years this optimism would be challenged by the brutality of World War I. But, Watson and his son, Thomas Watson Jr., molded IBM in accordance with the rationalist's cheerful faith, which manifested itself as a slow-moving, orderly approach to product development, an obsessive concern for the needs of the customers (which were tended by an impeccably groomed sales force) and a benevolent paternalism toward employees. Ironically, the ThinkPad, which would become symbolic of the "new IBM" and the approaching 21st century, was in many ways rooted in the company's past, a result of a process first expounded by Watson Sr. This story is about that irony, and the lessons to be learned if we are patient enough to watch the future emerge from the past. |