Happy 100th birthday, Big Blue

Pan Am, General Telephone, E.F. Hutton, General Foods — all of these once-household names are now gone, either bankrupt or swallowed up by bigger fish.

IBM? Not gone. Not even close. And now entering its second century.

[ Also on InfoWorld.com: Cringely has choice words for young whippersnappers Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. | Stay up to date on all Robert X. Cringely’s observations with InfoWorld’s Notes from the Underground newsletter and follow Cringely on Twitter. ]

It seems odd, even perverse, that a company so synonymous with technology could also be a century old. And yet, it is: 100 years ago, on June 16, 1911, the Computing Tabulating Recording company was formed. Among its top products: cash registers, punch clocks, and meat and cheese slicers.

The name International Business Machines wouldn’t be used until 1924, when CEO Thomas Watson changed the direction of the company for good. The meat and cheese slicers were soon replaced by punch-card counting machines, then a slew of computing innovations we now take for granted, starting with mainframe computers and magnetic storage. The rest, as they say, is history.

But unlike any of the other companies I mentioned early on, history is still happening at IBM, and there’s no end in sight. I can’t say I feel the same about most high-tech firms.

An anonymously penned essay on IBM’s website, marking the 100th anniversary, asks:

How does an organization outlive its founder?

We have learned not to confuse charisma with leadership. In business, there are archetypal examples where the genius of a founder created tremendous good fortune — at least in a company’s opening act. The cult of personality is seductive. But what then? How does an enterprise follow the departure of its founder or of a larger-than-life CEO?

If that’s not a jab at Apple, Facebook, or even Microsoft, I don’t know what is.

Nearly all highly successful tech companies develop their own, fiercely strong corporate cultures. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon — they’re all inside a bubble of their own creation. Invariably, the culture becomes so insular a line is drawn between those on the inside (employees and die-hard fans) and everyone else. They begin speaking in ways only they can understand and become baffled when nobody outside the bubble knows what the hell they’re talking about. People who criticize the company or its products “just don’t get it.” They become the enemy.

Just this week I had an exchange like this with someone at Facebook (whose resume also features stints at Apple and Google). Because I was critical of some feature of the service, I clearly must lack a fundamental understanding of how Facebook really worked, she told me — twice.

I immediately flashed back to the late 1990s, when Microsoft was taking heat for its monopolistic practices and intention to “crush” Netscape. Back then, the official corporate response to public criticism was “we need to do a better job of getting our message across.” In other words, if the public could only wrap its tiny little brains around what Microsoft was trying to do, we’d see they were right all along.

This is how companies fail. It’s what happened to Google with Buzz. It happens to Facebook every time it rolls out another new privacy-sapping service. It happens to Apple on a regular basis, though Jobs is so damned arrogant, he ignores it, borne aloft above the fray by a choir of fanboys.

But it doesn’t generally happen to IBM.

IBM has certainly stumbled over the years. It had to pull out of the PC market it created almost by accident because it screwed the pooch so badly. The entire company looked like it was on its way out in the 1990s. Yet it has not only survived, but thrived.

What Big Blue has not done is become too insular. Yes, IBM has a strong corporate culture; it is like a country within a country, with cities spread out all over the world. But over the last two decades, I’ve talked with dozens of IBMers and always came away impressed. It’s not just their intelligence — all those other companies are overflowing with gray matter, too. It’s also attitude. There isn’t a wall of arrogance separating them from the rest of the world.

Here’s the other weird thing: They all seemed happy to be working there. Maybe the disgruntled ones are carefully shielded from the press. But I certainly can’t say that about the Microsoft employees I’ve talked to. Most of them seemed miserable.

While IBM is no longer a player in the PC market, that’s only because its ambitions are a bit bigger than that. Exhibit A: The Watson supercomputer that dusted two puny humans at Jeopardy last winter. Exhibit B: For the 18th consecutive year, IBM was awarded more patents than any other company in 2010 — and more than the next five companies combined. Big Blue is still trying to find the upper limits of computing. It isn’t there yet.

What’s going to happen to Apple when Jobs goes, or Facebook when Zuckerberg reaches middle age and decides he wants to have a life, or Microsoft when Ballmer finally takes the hint and leaves? Will they be around to celebrate their 100th anniversaries? I’m not betting on it.

Which of today’s high-tech companies do you think will be around 100 years from now? Post your thoughts below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Happy 100th birthday, Big Blue,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Track the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.