Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround by Louis V. Gerstiner Jr

Gerstner's book about saving one of America's most important companies (IBM) from bankruptcy is interesting and a real page turner. IBM knew what was wrong after the PC became popular and mainframe computers lost much of their appeal, and had file drawers full of strategy documents on how to fix the situation, many of which would have worked, but IBM's top executives just could not change the company. Gerstner's insight was that IBM was its own worst enemy. Discovering what the single critical factor was in changing IBM and how Gerstner fixed it is worth many times the price of this book. However, two of Gerstner's conclusions are also worth reading: (1) He succeeded because of education, hard work, and self-help; and IBM succeeded not because of veniality, but because it found out what its customers and potential customers wanted and needed and supplied those needs and wants at a price the customers could afford. Life is fair and the world makes sense after all.

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