IBM on Innovation, Communications, Research

What can Communicators, including those in Sales & Marketing, learn from Researchers? What does innovation mean at IBM? How does IBM target B2B customers through social media and why is IBM on TikTok? Steve Tomasco, IBM's Vice President, Marketing & Communications, responded to these and other questions. Participants from around the world joined. The session was hosted at NYU School of Professional Studies. Below is a summary of his remarks and the link to his complete response to each question.

The most supercomputing power on the planet's history. Set up in 1 week

IBM can convene people together. Last year our IBM research leader spearheaded with Amazon, Google, and the White House, pulling together the Covid 19 high-performance computing consortium (HPC). It allowed any researcher access to the most supercomputing power ever assembled on the planet's history to help solve Covid. We set it up in a week. 1 Watch full response

The Pandemic at IBM

First, we focused on all our employees. We talk to them all the time.?We also did lots of communications for our clients. We had teams 24 7 working to help them address the issues around the pandemic. One example was the HPC consortium. 2 ?Watch full response

Educating customers about the benefits of IBM research

There's a lot of effort behind the scenes to make sure people understand what we're doing in the lab. Everything we do around natural language processing is some of the best stuff in the market today. A couple of years ago, we had an AI system that could debate humans. A talking AI machine that can beat a human in a debate, those things don't just grow on trees. We're working on things like that; it's pretty exciting. 3 ?Watch full response

IBMers now are younger. Capturing their hearts

Today, we have the youngest population in history at IBM. It's essential to capture their hearts and minds and how people think about IBM. We just created the smallest semiconductor the world has ever seen; future devices will have 400 times more battery power. We are doing cool things. 4?Watch full response

Marketing to B2B, and why is IBM on TikTok

We always explore new ways to spread our message and engage with future or current employees. We go where the conversation is, and if the conversation is on tick-tock, we go there. Many IBMers doing cool stuff also participate in different social forums. 5?Watch full response

IBM’s social message

Since our founding, IBM has always been an advocate for social issues. It's a core value for who we are as a company. Whether it's the advocacy for the bathroom bills in Texas , facial recognition, sustainability, or climate change, you cannot separate social issues from your business strategy. We develop technologies because it's not just affecting us; it affects many of our clients. 6 ?Watch full response

?How IBM Research differs from other IBM departments

The communications team is very integrated, and we operate as one big team. We are not tied to a product. How people think about you, how they feel about your company, how they feel about IBM is important. That's where the research team comes in. They are the experts in the room. We work with them to build thought leadership. 7 ?Watch full response

The culture at the Research department

IBM's Research department culture is collegial and team-oriented. At Communications, our job is to understand their work and help them translate it. It can be intimidating, I've been doing this for a long time, and sometimes I'll go into someone's office, and two hours later, I won't understand a word they said. It's so much fun. It's fascinating to get to know them. They are just brilliant minds. 8?Watch full response

What we can learn from Researchers

Scientists question everything, and that stimulates innovation. Our goal is progress. Innovation is about building what's next. A critical point about innovation is that you need a path to market. Our work horizons are 1-2 years, 3-5, 5-10, and beyond ten years. 9??Watch full response

IBM gets the most patents. A view on Opensource

Patents are one piece of intellectual property, but open source changed the way people thought about a "wall garden approach to computing." There is a shift toward technology that isn't run by one company. At the Linux foundation, anyone can contribute. That's a different model, where you don't have to do all that hard work yourself and can tap into open-source communities. More and more companies are going to be open about what they work on and share technology. The winners will be the ones that can build on top of that. 10 ?Watch full response

The meaning of innovation at IBM

Innovation is building what's next and applying it to make progress. Everything we do around innovation in semiconductors, quantum computing, and exploratory science are examples. Quantum information theory 30 years ago was just a pipe dream. Fifteen years ago, no one was even thinking about building an actual quantum system. Today there are 20 quantum computers in the lab I work. ?The progress we have made in the last five years is amazing. It's something that people did not think was going to be here this fast. 11?Watch full response

Fostering daily innovation

The hardest thing to do at a big company like ours is to stay focused. You can get caught up in having meetings all day and then suddenly say, "What did I actually do today besides sit in meetings?". I always ask myself, what are we not doing that I haven't even thought of? We have agency partners who come in and look at what we're doing. Being open-minded, having people come in who think differently about what you must accomplish help. 12?Watch full response

Fostering global innovation

Innovation has no geographic borders. If we only had people in New York and Silicon Valley, the only mindset we would get would be that of New York and Silicon Valley. We're unique because we have researchers worldwide, from all different types of backgrounds, with all different kinds of expertise. It's a huge advantage. 13?Watch full response

How IBM manages employees’ ideas

You can create what you want here if you have the drive to go and do it. But it has to be for a purpose; that's super important. There are no random acts of research, something that's interesting, but it's not part of our strategy. Other research institutions at other companies went away because they weren't focused on delivering value. 14 ?Watch full response

"You can't delegate understanding"

That's a phrase that one of my former bosses used to say. It means that you can’t get caught up thinking there is a team for that, or you're a manager, or this or that. To understand something and make a communication strategy around it, you need to understand it. Be inquisitive, ask questions, become an expert. I don't have a science or technology background; I was a liberal art major. I was fascinated by technology and spent a ton of time reading, researching, and spending time with the research teams to understand how things work. 15 ?Watch full response

Tips for college students

It's super important to write down your ideas, your business plan and to be able to put them on a piece of paper. When I was in school, I wish I would have gotten more training on the business side of everything, reading a balance sheet, understanding why a CFO or a CEO are doing what they're doing. You're not going to have a seat at the table unless you understand how what you're doing helps the business make money. 15?Watch full response

Waking up at 4:30 AM

I'm up at 4:30 in the morning every day. The first thing I do is to scan the news, the Times, the Journal, the FT. I'm very interested in how each outlet approaches a story, who was the PR person, and why this is the headline. I still get the New York Times on weekends, the physical paper, and it's great how my hands get dirty.15 ?Watch full response

NB: after hearing this, one of the students wrote on the feedback, “I need to get up earlier.”

Did a golden algorithm change the role of communications?

There are tools to map how a story spreads. We placed a story with Techcrunch and saw how it spread to more people than other stories in the Wall Street Journal. At the same time, I'm still a firm believer in relationships with key outlets and media. You need to be constantly learning. The only way to do that is to get out there, meet people and build those relationships. 15?Watch full response

Students' reactions to Steve's chat

The feedback shown below was received anonymously.

Why we bring speakers to a Finance class

At a school with constant innovation, the best thing we can do for our students is to have them speak with real-world leaders to become inspired. It's mutually beneficial. Teaching this class is a highlight of the week for me. For my 'day job', I frequently use ideas about pricing and product launches I learn from my students. Read more about this class .

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Previous speakers and recordings

Chief Communications Officer, IBM. McDonald's Chief Global Impact Officer; McDonald's Corporate Vice President, Supply Chain. Procter & Gamble CFO, Asia-Pacific. Nike Global Retail Marketing Lead. Roche Head of Strategic Finance. Campbell Soup President, International. Estee Lauder Chief Marketing Officer. Estee Lauder Chief Communications Officer. Access recordings here .

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Thank you, Steve

Students who had selected IBM among over 500 companies to learn about corporate Finance were tremendously thankful to Stev for joining us. Sessions are In-person and "with a mask." Students made this video to thank Steve "without a mask."

Special thanks

Steve Tomasco for joining us. Michael Diamond, Robbin Smith, Patrick Brady, Melody Na, Regina Lu, Celeste Zou, Georgina He, and Julia int-Hof. Also, to all my students, who make this lecture my favorite part of the week.

These talks are offered as part of the Leading Global Growth series from NYU School of Professional Studies and managed in coordination with NYU SPS Integrated Marketing & Communications Department within the Division of Programs in Business.

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Watch the whole recording on Youtube or NYU Stream

The recording is available on YouTube here with subtitles/captions in English, Spanish & Chinese. Those in a region where YouTube is not accessible can watch it on NYU's stream channel here .

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Questions asked

How does IBM adapt its marketing strategies and communications at a time when everything in the world is constantly changing? Angela Bauza ??????

Did the pandemic bring challenges to the communication department? What did you do about it? Chenyu Ni

What challenges did you encounter educating customers about the benefits of IBM Research? Olivia Zhu

Why does IBM seem silent compared to other big companies? IBM doesn't launch campaigns with superstars, actors, or singers. I don't see many advertisements for IBM here in NYC. Lingchen Kong, asked by Dylan Pimentel

How does IBM utilize digital marketing to target B2B customers, and why is IBM on TikTok? Julia in 't Hof

How important is spreading a social message in a marketing strategy? Viraj Nathany

?How is the communication strategy for IBM Research different than other IBM's departments? Xinyue Yang

What is the culture of IBM's Research Department? Dana Sahrai

What can communicators, including those in Sales & marketing, learn from Researchers? George Benaroya.

What's the most challenging part of managing IBM's Intellectual Property? Melody Jiang

What does innovation mean at IBM? Could you share examples of innovation initiatives? Ruby Xu

How do you keep being innovative on a daily basis? Zitong Qiu Live

IBM has 3,000 Researchers. Is that good or bad for innovation? Chian Jiang Recorded

When an employee comes up with a new idea, how do you handle that at IBM? Dylan Pimentel, a question from Ziyang Zhang

Questions from Michael Diamond