Book Review: The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM

This book read like a novel, in fact a better novel than many that i have read. It starts with white collar crime then a life remade through determination, then rich business exploits and adventures follow, but it has drama and ups and downs. The central character is a charismatic super-hero but he also has a number of fantastic flaws. There is a lot of family dysfunction and tragedy, but still the son receives the baton from the father and excels his achievements in many ways.

This is about Thomas Watson Sr. who built IBM to be a great corporation by building a great culture and becoming an embodiment of that culture. IBM is a very customer oriented and sales oriented company. But it also made huge R&D investments, spearheaded enormous number of technical advancements and did a number of "bet the farm" technological initiatives. So they are no doubt a technology company. But the important thing about IBM is that it a very customer and sales oriented company. And the reason lies in it's history and its roots laid out by Thomas Watson Sr. And this book essentially gets into the essence of what IBM is all about by dissecting the life of Mr. Watson.

Some of the fascinating things to learn from this book are how the computing era dawned from the mechanical calculators and the cash registers. Mr. Watson figured out how to sell technology long before others did. This explains totally the "IBM Middleware commercials" which only talks about the solutions and the business benefits and never gets into the technological mumbo-jumbo.

Lou Gerstener in his book: Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround
talks about how his turnaround job was essentially to re-establish IBM's culture like it was under the Watsons. Reading this book will really help in understanding Lou's book and what he accomplished at IBM.

When I read that book, Mr. Watson's persona often reminded me of Larry Ellison (Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle ) with their outsized ego, penchant for publicity and self-promotion and impeccable business instincts. I was delighted to find out that the author thought the same too.