Samuel Palmisano

Name: Samuel J. Palmisano

Born: July 30, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Computer-related contributions

• President and chief executive officer of IBM (2000-2012).
• Joined IBM in 1973 as a salesman, and worked there until 2012.
• Prepared the company for cloud computing, referred to on-demand computing inside IBM.
• Led the sale of the PC group to Lenovo which closed in 2005.

Significant publications

• Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet (2013).
• Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company (2011).
• Leading Change When Business Is Good: The HBR Interview (2009).
• Program like it's 1999—Solving the Millennium Computer Date Problem (2005).

Honors and awards

• Awarded The Deming Cup (2010).
• Honorary Chairman of National Engineers Week (2008).

Quotes

"Tech never comes back the same."