By R. Michael Brown, Journalist | Feature Story Writer | Multimedia Producer | Former IBMer
When Lou Gerstner arrived in April 1993, IBM was bleeding cash and confidence.
Competitors chipped away at IBM’s legacy strongholds. Analysts openly questioned whether “Big Blue” should be broken up. Internal divisions were siloed and slow.
Gerstner had just led RJR Nabisco. His résumé also included McKinsey and American Express. He became IBM’s first CEO hired from outside the company.
As an IBMer, I shared the frustration with constant internal politics and a lack of customer focus.
Gerstner’s early message was famously blunt: “Execution matters more than lofty vision,” he said.
He rejected a plan to break IBM into smaller “Baby Blues,” betting instead that customers still needed a single integrator capable of delivering end-to-end solutions.
That decision reshaped IBM’s future and helped push the company toward services and enterprise transformation—moves widely credited with reversing one of the most dramatic corporate declines in American business history.
Gerstner’s tenure was not sentimental. He ended long-standing cultural practices, including IBM’s “no layoff” tradition, and he demanded accountability at every level. Yet the results were hard to argue with.
He restored profitability, simplified IBM’s structure, and repositioned the company for the networked economy that would soon dominate global business.
Multimedia Explosion and the Beginning of the Web
For many inside IBM, his leadership style could feel relentless—but it also felt clarifying. Few saw that transformation more closely than I did.
He saw my early multimedia productions—new technology at the time—and recognized their value. He understood that the world’s leading computer company could use multimedia to deliver his messages more powerfully.
He gave me the opportunity to contribute and I’m grateful he did. I served as one of Gerstner’s speechwriters and his multimedia producer. Prior to Gerstner arriving, I pioneered IBM’s early multimedia and Internet communication efforts. That work helped redefine how executives communicated at scale in the digital era.
Gerstner would call me and tell me that he “needed some Disney” for his presentation. He wasn’t big on what he called “chitchat” but was open to my ideas for the content we produced. We talked about the future of the web…
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