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.
It's easy to have an act one and two. Go ahead and have an act three, four, and five. The saying is the easy part. The doing is the hard part.
Don't protect your past. Don't protect your products.
I don't think anybody's just B2B or B2C anymore. You are B2I - business to individual.
If it's digital, it will be cognitive. If you think that, you're going to change the way you run a business.
IBM existed a good 50 years before mainframes - we started with scales.
I am very practical.
You need to have a great support around you, people that empathise, understand and yet support, because these CEO jobs are all-consuming.
The amazing thing about IBM is that it's a company where I have had 10 different careers - local jobs, global jobs, technology jobs, industry jobs, financial services, insurance, start-ups, big scale. The network of talent around you is phenomenal.
If you step back and look at technology from every era, it has displaced jobs but also created a lot of jobs.
One day we're going to look back, and whatever this era will get called, it's going to put a premium on math and science.
We should prepare our future workforce differently. It isn't just advanced STEM degrees. There are many jobs you can do without advanced degrees.
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
I am big on - even with our whole team - it's always about, well, what were the lessons learned? Something didn't work out? What are the lessons learned? What are the lessons learned?
This idea of 'New Collar' says for the jobs of the future here, there are many in technology that can be done without a four-year college degree and, therefore, 'New Collar' not 'Blue Collar,' 'White Collar.' It's 'New Collar.'
The ability to please your shareholders comes because of what you do for clients.
Above and beyond, not only are we an innovation company, we are in service of our clients.
Some people make their choice on size. I happen to not be a believer in that. I've often said, especially in an industry that's clamoring for growth, if I wanted size, I wouldn't have divested $8 billion of businesses.
When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.
When you're on a scale like we are in 170 countries and hundreds of thousands of people, you have a single point of view.
