What was the most surprising thing you learned writing the book?

[Steve]

I'm curious about what the most surprising thing you learned doing all of the research and interviews to write Making the World Work Better? Was there anything really unexpected or startling you learned?

[Jeffrey]

I was amazed at the breadth of projects in which IBM is and has been involved. I had written about Smarter Planet in Fortune, so i had an idea that the business interests were pretty eclectic. And yet, i was continually surprised to see the company involved in everything from hybrid cars to photovoltaics to policing to space travel to cutting-edge recycling to spintronics to, of course, supercomputers and blade servers and middleware and consulting. the list goes on and on. And many of these seemingly disparate projects all seem to hang together under one overarching mission. there aren't many companies I know of that can say the same.

Oh, yeah, and i was thrilled to see a box full of old Ansel Adams photographs in the corporate archives that were commissioned by the company. The company has worked with amazing designers and artists over the years...as i'm sure you all realize.

jeff