Nt1330 Unit 3 Individual Assignment

Personal declaration:
Word count: 2413

I confirm that this piece of work is a result of my own work. Material from the work of others not involved in the project has been acknowledged and quotations and paraphrases suitably indicated.

Furthermore, I confirm that I understand the definition of plagiarism that is used by Durham University, and that all source material has been appropriate cited and referenced.

I understand that only the content in the main body of the work will be marked, and that the content in the Appendices will be checked, but will not contribute to the marking of my assignment.

The International Business Machines Corporation is an American computer manufacturing company
Watson in 1914 to lead the company and after surviving the Great Depression, Watson changed the name of CTR to International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924 (ANBHF, 2005, p14). From the beginning, IBM has defined itself not by selling products, which ranged from punch card tabulators to electronic computers, but by its research and development (Bellis, 2013).

IBM has had a major impact on the US economy over several decades. It has been a leading supplier of business machines, computer, and information technology services (Agarwal et al., 2009, p285).

Any entrepreneurship firm typically deals with 3 types of
During the 1980s and early 1990s, IBM felt prey to back-to-back revolutions. The PC revolution placed computers directly in the hands of common man, followed by the client-server revolution which required to link all of those PCs (the "clients") with larger computers that laboured in the background (the "servers" that served data and applications to client machines) (IBM Archives).

Looking at their past records, the top management at IBM felt that the sales of mainframes would reach 100 billion dollar by 1990. Mainframes were the pillars of IBM’s success in the 1980s. IBM’s high goals lay merely on increased production of mainframes which got shattered when the market changed (Singh A., 2006).

Both revolutions transformed the way customers viewed, used, and bought technology and this fundamentally shook up IBM. Purchasing decisions were now individuals’ and departments’ choices and not in the places where IBM had built its long-term customer relationships (IBM Archives). IBM had lost its customer relationships and under the leadership of John Akers, the strategy shifted from a long-term relationship with rental customers to a short-term relationship of a buy-sell transaction. When a firm loses its touch with the customers, it loses the context of its business and so it cannot make correct decisions (Mills D.Q. et.al,