“John Wolpert was hired to infuse some new blood into IBM. In
fact, he and three of his classmates arrived straight out of
business school and were told to get IBM to “act like a
startup….”
“He tries to strike a balance between communicating with the
vast labyrinth that is the rest of IBM and building a presence in
the outside world. Wolpert runs boot camps for budding
entrepreneurs, hiring students to roam IBM’s labs worldwide and
make friends with the researchers so they will submit their
technologies to alphaWorks….”
“Wolpert goes to Silicon Valley conferences where startups
gather and tries to convince them that since IBM is big enough to
change their businesses–even accidentally–it is best to work with
IBM. alphaWorks has poured resources into Java, XML and Linux
and is now turning its attention to security and privacy,
developing technologies to “change the way people purchase by
eliminating the space between impulse and decision,” Wolpert
says.”