Dinner with Nick Donofrio
Last Thursday I was invited to have dinner with Nick Donofrio who is Executive Vice President of Innovation and Technology at IBM. The event was organized by HR to revitalize the technical community in our organization. Among the persons invited where some of the best technical resources from the different organizations that form the company (ITS, BCS, AS, IGS and SWG).It was a nice experience. Nick certainly knows IBM in depth. He has been part of the core team for decades now and he has been responsible for taking many far reaching decisions such at moving the mainframes from bipolar to CMOS technology, a decision that in retrospect certainly saved the company when it was going through tough times back in the early nineties.Few persons within IBM can explain the company’s strategy as well as Nick or Steve Mills. That is why it is nice to talk with them because it becomes easier to understand the big picture, something that is not always clear when you spend the day working on a small part of the business (in my case, software).One of the things that bothers me is that at IBM we lack a CEO who is able to articulate a clear and compelling technology vision to our customers, the press and the employees. That is why you will always hear about technology superstars Ellison, Jobs, Schwartz and even Gates (who doesn’t have many interesting things to say lately) but never about Sam Palmisano, IBM’s current Chairman, CEO and President, in case you were wondering who he was (as many of our customers).I shared my concern with Nick Donofrio and he told me about all the superstars we have at IBM who provide that technical vision and prowess that we IBMers like to share with our customers in order to create a competitive advantage that smaller competitors usually find hard to overcome. Most of them are part of our large team of IBM Fellows, that includes luminaries such as Grady Booch as well as our army of Distinguished Engineers. They are the ones who set at communicate IBM’s vision, a task that in most tech companies is in part the responsibility of the CEO.Nick is right, IBM has a great senior technical team and I would love to become part of it. Right now I have to focus on becoming a senior certified software it architect, something that I expect to achieve next year.Still, I would love to have a CEO that is respected in the technology community for his vision. After all, running IBM shouldn’t just be about the financials. Shareholders may disagree but in my opinion it takes a great technological leader to grow a tech company, not a banker. That is my opinion, both as an employee and as a shareholder.