But the point still stands that an international enterprise, with a very established culture, and a world of traditions, can stay fairly current in the face of what is being referred to as a groundswell. Five, ten or twenty years from now we’ll likely be praising IBM for allowing its employees to participate in a managed way instead of resisting. Whether or not it impacts the bottom line is going to be interesting to watch.

Re. your comment about stock price (obviously referring to when I brought up the visual of IBM’s stock price performance vs. the S&P 500 over the last two years)… I wanted to illustrate the point that, even though IBM leadership is will aware of social media trends, and definitely feels some pressure to start playing in social media spaces, there is also risk in going down those paths. And for brands as valuable as IBM the risk is great indeed. IBM is #2 now behind only Coca Cola… http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/09/15/daily41.html

So, how hard you push a company like IBM down these new and unknown paths is going to be influenced by how much you need to do it. So I can see our executives thinking, among other things… “If the stock price is doing well, why mess with a good thing?”