Splitting from IBM
As many readers will remember, the Think brand was created by IBM when it was still in the PC making business. That all changed in December 2004, when IBM announced it was selling its PC business to Lenovo.
O'Sullivan worked at IBM at the time of the sale to Lenovo, so we asked her what that experience was like and if there were any cultural difficulties. "I was the general manager of the personal computer division at IBM, so I was heavily involved in getting ready for the sale. But what people don't always realize is that we moved over 10,000 employees from IBM to Lenovo and more than half of them were IBM China."
Fair enough, but there must have been some challenges, like language. "I find Mandarin to be the most difficult of languages. There are five different tones that alter the meaning of a single word, so it's very hard. I found Japanese easier. So I know very little, but we all speak English.
"Other cultural differences were that the Chinese didn't work in matrices, something you have to do in a global company to be efficient. Also, to generalize: the Asians tended to be very quiet, especially in teleconferences and the obnoxious Westerners would roll over them.
"An interesting study revealed that Western females and Eastern males were the most compatible in this context - with a greater emphasis on consensus rather than a ‘slap on the back and buy you a beer afterwards' philosophy."
