罗睿兰：IBM未来要用5条腿走路

    罗睿兰对企业家的建议：千万不要仅仅依靠一个产品。现代社会瞬息万变，这么做会让一家公司陷入万劫不复之地。“你会错过（技术）革新，会错过那些最具颠覆性的东西，例如商业模式。”

    身为IBM董事长兼首席执行官，罗睿兰曾亲身经历过危机。她在IBM就职30多年，经历了上世纪90年代初公司命悬一线的那段日子。如今，她是这家百年企业的首席执行官。IBM历经102年，到罗睿兰也才是第九任首席执行官。正是由于这个显赫地位，56岁的罗睿兰再次荣登《财富》（Fortune）杂志“美国最具影响力商界女性”排行榜的首位。

    10月16日，罗睿兰出席了《财富》杂志在华盛顿举办的“最具影响力女性峰会”，向与会者阐述了IBM未来发展的5大方向。首先，专注科研，IBM一直是科研领域的领导者。这家公司延揽了3000多名博士，拥有业界最大的科研团队，过去20年一直在全球专利申请数量上排名第一；其次，与客户保持良好关系，它们与IBM在创新方面的合作越来越密切；再次，关注与科研院校以及风险投资机构的合作；最后，新型社交网络工具也是重中之重。依靠它们，罗睿兰得以与公司40多万名员工密切沟通，随时从中发掘出闪光点。

    IBM成功的秘诀之一就是能妥善处理好与数量众多的员工的关系，集思广益，让员工为公司的发展出谋划策。例如，罗睿兰提到了IBM的《全球技术展望》报告——公司科研人员每年撰写该报告，以预测科技的发展趋势。罗睿兰依靠这份报告制定公司战略，而且每年对过去的《全球技术展望》报告进行评估，判断它对未来趋势的把握是否准确。

    IBM将依靠沃森等新技术在计算机模型领域取得突破。沃森超级电脑在两年半之前参加了Jeopardy电视问答大赛，当着美国全国电视观众的面战胜了多位奇才。沃森向大家展示了超级计算机的诸多能力：存储海量信息、进行快速筛选、以自然语言的形式反馈并能从错误中学习经验。这是IBM实验室过去数十年的研究成果，对于这些技术，IBM才刚刚开始商业化尝试。我在最近的《财富》专栏中写过一篇IBM打算商业化沃森的文章。

    罗睿兰说：“沃森的下一站是医学院。”它将进驻克里夫兰医疗中心，帮助那里的医学院学生学习医学文献。

    与此同时，IBM实验室的科学家们正在改进沃森。罗睿兰称：“沃森2.0将具备识别图像的能力，沃森3.0有望实现和人交流”。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航  

    Ginni Rometty's advice to companies: Don't define your business by a product. In a world of consistent and constant change, it's the most dangerous thing for a company to do. "You'll miss [technology] shifts. You'll miss dangerous ones like business models," said Rometty.

    As Chairman and CEO of IBM (IBM), Rometty has seen the danger firsthand. Having spent more than 30 years at the company, she lived through the near-death experience of the early 1990s and is now just the ninth CEO in the company's 102-year history. It's this role that has earned Rometty, 56, the top spot on Fortune's list of the Most Powerful Women in Business.

    Speaking October 16 at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., Rometty outlined five areas on which she depends to help her prepare IBM for future markets. First, there's research, an area in which the company has long been a leader. The company employs 3,000 Ph.D.s -- the largest research outfit in the technology industry -- and has been the global patent leader for the past 20 years. Just as important are relationships with clients, who are increasingly partnering more closely with IBM on innovation initiatives. Rometty also nurtures relationships with universities and with the venture capital community. And, thanks to new social tools, Rometty has been able to connect more deeply with IBM's 400,000 employees to unearth ideas bubbling up internally.

    One secret to IBM's success has been the discipline it applies to nurturing these relationships and harvesting insights from them. For example, Rometty described the company's global technology outlook, a document that researchers prepare annually to map out future trends. Rometty depends on it to inform strategy, and each year grades past GTOs for their success in predicting trends.

    It's this discipline that leads to breakthrough computing paradigms like Watson. It's been two-and-a-half years since the Jeopardy-winning computer beat a couple of brainiacs on national television -- and demonstrated that computing tools could store and sift through copious amounts of information, respond to natural language, and learn from its mistakes. It's technology that represents decades of work in IBM's labs, and the company is just beginning to commercialize it. I wrote about IBM's efforts to bring it to market in a recent Fortune feature .

    Now, says Rometty, "Watson is off to medical school." The technology will be deployed at the Cleveland Clinic to help medical students better understand medical literature.

    Meanwhile, in IBM's labs, scientists are working to improve Watson. "A Watson 2.0 will see -- pictures of things," says Rometty. "And a Watson 3.0 can reason with humans."