If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.

Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not.

I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.

In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.