It seems like IBM and public education are a match made in heaven.
It's a perfect match because a lot of the problems that schools face, like the problems hospitals and healthcare organizations face and businesses face, are not problems of simply exhorting everybody to try harder. At a certain point you can't change any company or any organization just by saying, "Why don't you all work a little harder?" Instead you have to think about new tools, new ways to change the way the organization operates so that the same people can become more productive. And the Internet and information technology is one of those very powerful tools.
IBM is awfully smart because IBM isn't saying that the technology will substitute for teachers. What IBM is saying is that we can use the Internet to empower teachers, to help them teach more effectively, to develop new curriculums faster, to get access to the World Wide Web with all of its resources, to communicate with parents so we can solve children's problems, to get data about student achievement. And that if you do all those things, then teachers are in a better position to do their job.
So we're using technology to improve the way people do their work. And that's exactly the productivity enhancements that IBM tries to sell to its normal customers. So it is a perfect match to do that in schools.
This "perfect match" seems to rely on IBM and the schools working as true partners. How significant is the emphasis on "partnership" to Reinventing Education's success?
It's very significant. IBM is not alone in learning about the nature of partnership, but IBM has certainly made that the centerpiece of Reinventing Education. This is not a donation of computers to schools. In fact, this is not actually giving anything directly from IBM at all, because the solutions themselves are created in a partnership. It's through the interaction that new solutions have been developed. IBM has certainly had the technology, but the expertise that teachers and administrators have brought about the educational process, about what would work in a school system, has been very important to the development process.
In your book, Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, you talk about extending a company's purpose through involvement in a meaningful form of community service. How important is Reinventing Education to IBM's self-identity?
I think it's very important. I think people like working for a company that stands for something very positive in the world. That's very important to people, and particularly in the Internet age where so many things appear to be impersonal and people want that feeling of social significance. And so I think this is a source of great pride to IBM employees. To know that the wisdom and knowledge and technology and tools that are being developed in the company can be turned to such important social ends and something that everybody cares about — because everybody cares about the education of their children — I think is really important. This is such a good way for a company to use its resources.
