The Maverick and His Machine by Kevin Maney, Wiley, £20.95/$29.95, ISBN 0471414638 Reviewed by Barry Fox
WITH nice irony, Kevin Maney’s fresh look at a company that is in the business of eliminating paper comes from the discovery of 340 boxfiles of letters and meeting transcripts, all on paper. The result is an intriguing study of the man who made IBM, Thomas Watson. It also helped me to understand why I have always felt indefinably uncomfortable when putting anything less than sycophantic questions to IBM’s politely smiling closed ranks of PR people.
In the early 1900s Watson worked for the…
