During my 15 years at IBM Rochester, working in both support and development, I came to deeply appreciate a unique and powerful part of IBM’s culture, which was a single word: THINK.
Visitors and outsiders often ask me what made IBM, especially the team behind IBM i (and its predecessor, the AS/400), so distinct. The answer is woven into the fabric of the company itself. In nearly every office I walked into, I’d see a small plaque that simply said “THINK.” It wasn’t just decoration. It was a mindset.
To understand why this word means so much, you must go back to 1915. It was a rainy morning in Dayton, Ohio, and Thomas J. Watson Sr. (who would go on to found IBM) was frustrated with a sluggish meeting at the National Cash Register Company. His colleagues weren’t generating ideas, so he stood up and delivered a pointed message:
The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. We don’t get paid for working with our feet, we get paid for working with our heads.
Watson went on to say that “knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success.” Then he walked to the blackboard and wrote a single word in bold, capital letters: THINK.
That word stuck.
THINK became IBM’s one-word slogan. By the 1920s and ’30s, it appeared everywhere, on walls, plaques, stone engravings, company newsletters, and even New Yorker cartoons. It was more than a motivational quote. It became part of IBM’s DNA.
You can still see its influence today. IBM's famous laptop line is called ThinkPad. Even the IBM Mid America Employees Federal Credit Union was rebranded as Think Bank, a nod to the legacy and power of that one-word philosophy.
I remember the day I received my own THINK plaque. My manager gave it to me as a thank you for helping successfully integrate a new product into the IBM i operating system. It wasn’t flashy or expensive, but it meant the world to me. It was a signal that I had contributed something meaningful, that I was part of a tradition of thinking things through, solving problems, and delivering results.
The great news is you don’t have to work at IBM to get your hands on a THINK plaque or other IBM-branded gear for yourself or for others. The IBM Brand Store offers everything from memorabilia to modern merchandise, and they ship worldwide because, after all, the “I” in IBM stands for International.
In a world that often feels like it's moving too fast to pause and reflect, THINK is a powerful reminder. Whether you're coding, designing, administering, troubleshooting, or leading—great things happen when we take the time to think.
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