Former IBM exec Irving Wladawsky-Berger urges more math, science in schools

Irving Wladawsky-Berger

IBM was at death’s door in the late 1980s.

Consumer tastes were changing, and the company was caught flat-footed.

The PC revolution led by Apple, Intel and Microsoft was cannibalizing Big Blue’s low-margin mainframe business.

Expensive research projects weren’t making it into consumer products, and the company was short on cash to pay its 400,000 employees, according to Irving Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology.

“We couldn’t adapt,” Wladawsky-Berger said. “When the environment changes, you have to change.”