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Business Book

Making the World Work Better

Armonk, NY (USA), June 2011 - IBM marks its Centennial with the release of a new business book entitled "Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company". The book was written by award-winning journalists Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm, and Jeffrey M. O'Brien.




The work chronicles the ways the world has changed over a century in technology, business and the way progress happens, and the role IBM has played in these changes.

The volume's lessons for all businesses are powerful: To survive and succeed for a decade - even more for a century - requires the ability to anticipate change and the capacity to continually transform. Over the course of a century, IBM - grounded in a distinctive culture and set of core values - came into being, grew, thrived, nearly died, transformed itself, and is now charting a new path for its second century of innovation.

"The authors uncovered not only a wealth of facts and stories, but a set of powerful ideas. Though never written down, they have informed the company's history from its birth to the present day", says Mike Wing, Vice President of IBM Strategic Communications and editor of the book.

The book is both a look at IBM's past and an instructive narrative on how one of the world's largest companies will operate in the 21st century. It is divided into three chapters.

In "Pioneering the Science of Information", Kevin Maney tells the story of the evolution of information technology over a century, including how IBM engineers and scientists invented many of the building blocks of modern information technology such as the memory chip, the mainframe computer, the PC, new fields of mathematics, and the Watson computer that defeated two grand champions on the popular TV quiz show, Jeopardy! This story points to the future of science and of how we think about thinking itself.

In "Reinventing the Modern Corporation", Steve Hamm focuses on how IBM's business innovations - from progressive workforce policies, to new ideas of societal responsibility, to global engagement, to the deliberate creation of corporate culture - have helped shape the modern corporation.

In "Making the World Work Better", Jeffrey M. O'Brien looks underneath the work of IBM and other technological and societal innovators, discovering how we actually make progress. The pattern he unearths helps illuminate achievements ranging from putting a man on the moon, creating cleaner air and water, and improving the health of populations, to shaping safer, less congested cities. It's a path that can make a lasting impact on our world, and one that IBM is actively pursuing today.

The book will be printed in eight languages and be available in an electronic format as an eBook.