Are you telling me that a biscuit seller is going to run the technology conglomerate that is already in ruins and counting its days? Are you kidding me?
Many were shocked when IBM asked Lou Gerstner, then CEO of RJR Nabisco to take the helm of floundering IBM in the early 1990s. A CEO who had no knowledge of computer machines, programming, or software, and importantly, who had no knowledge of IBM’s potential customer segments. Gerstner’s experience was also largely in selling to consumers, not in the business-to-business sales that IBM required. How did he turn around the largest computer company in the world with so many limitations? What lessons could we learn?
