When Virginia “Ginni” Rometty became the CEO of IBM, in early 2012, she dutifully adopted her predecessor’s strategy. Sam Palmisano, who held the position for a decade, had vowed in 2010 that IBM would roughly double its per-share earnings within five years. Two-plus years into her tenure, Rometty concluded that trying to meet that goal would end up crippling IBM’s efforts to reinvent itself. She abandoned the plan in October 2014, thereby taking full ownership of the company’s future strategy and financial health. It’s been an interesting ride ever since. Rometty, 59, is on a protracted mission to make IBM a cloud-based “solutions” business. She has invested billions in advanced technologies while selling off legacy divisions that don’t fit the new model.
“Don’t Try to Protect the Past”
Ginni Rometty has spent 36 years at IBM, where she now serves as president, CEO, and chair of the board. She is on a protracted mission to reinvent the company as a cloud-based “solutions” business. That transformation involves moving into areas that have higher value and shedding ones that don’t. IBM’s new businesses around cloud, data, and security account for almost $34 billion in revenue. They’re growing by more than 13% a year and constitute 42% of the company.
In this interview Rometty says that IBM is trying to “unlock” the 80% of data behind the firewalls of client companies so that those organizations can use it to make better decisions, adding, “There’s a $2 trillion market around better decision making.” She talks about why IBM’s earnings have declined for 20 consecutive quarters, what kinds of employees the company’s new course demands, gender-related challenges in her career, and more.
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