West didn’t seem to like many of the fruits of the age of the transistor. Of machines he had helped to build, he said, “If you start getting interested in the last one, then you’re dead.” But there was more to it. “The old things, I can’t bear to look at them. They’re clumsy. I can’t believe we were that dumb.” He spoke about the rapidity with whic

there’s no such thing as a perfect design. Most experienced computer engineers I talked to agreed that absorbing this simple lesson constitutes the first step in learning how to get machines out the door. Often, they said, it is the most talented engineers who have the hardest time learning when to stop striving for perfection. West was the voice f

West sits in his office and declares, “The only way I can do this machine is in this crazy environment, where I can basically do it any way that I want.”

By the mid-1960s, a trend that would become increasingly pronounced was already apparent: while the expense of building a computer’s hardware was steadily declining, the cost of creating both user and system software was rising. In an extremely bold stroke, IBM took advantage of the trend. They announced, in the mid-sixties, all at one time, an ent

When they chose their lawyer, who would deal with the financial community for them, they insisted that he invest some of his own money in their company. “We don’t want you running away if we get in trouble. We want you there protecting your own money,”

“He set up the opportunity and he didn’t stand in anyone’s way. He wasn’t out there patting people on the back. But I’ve been in the world too long and known too many bosses who won’t allow you the opportunity. He never put one restriction on me. Tom allowed me to take a role where I could make things happen. What does a secretary do? She types, an

“The way West was with us, it provided a one-level separation—someone far enough away to lay blame on.”

That fall West had put a new term in his vocabulary. It was trust. “Trust is risk, and risk avoidance is the name of the game in business,” West said once, in praise of trust. He would bind his team with mutual trust, he had decided. When a person signed up to do a job for him, he would in turn trust that person to accomplish it; he wouldn’t break

IBM set up two main divisions, each one representing the other’s main competition.