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Friday, May 9, 2008

Visit of Nick Donofrio at IBM Belgium


Yesterday, Nick Donofrio gave a session on innovation at IBM Belgium.

I really had the feeling to be in front of a legend. For 44 years he has been working on the most innovative IBM projects : the transition to CMOS, the System/360, the RS6000... He has surfed all the important IT waves with style.



Mr Donofrio will retire in October this year and he mainly emphasized on what makes IBM a great company :
  • IBM values
  • IBM's strenght : the combination of Systems, Software and Services which allow to create value
  • IBM's strategy
    • Focus on open technologies and high value solutions
    • Deliver innovation and integration to our clients
    • Become the premier globally integrated company

Being global is an important topic for IBM, according to Nick Donofrio. And indeed IBM has lauched many initiatives around globalization:
  • the global innovation outlook with global topics on the agenda like Water, Security and the society in a global world...
  • the global citizenship portfolio which will provide IBMers with valuable tools to enhance their expertise and careers within a globally integrating economy.

To start and to finish his speech Mr Donofrio encouraged the IBMers to anticipate change and to use change as an opportunity. Or even better : create the change. He explained how his father created change for his family. He wanted the best for Nick and created the change by setting hard work as a mean to reach a better education level. (Was it a success ? Apparently yes.) The only explanation for this move was : "If nothing changes, nothing changes". Be an actor of change.

And for IBM one of the current changes is... globalization.


About Nick Donofrio

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions

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