[1] He held a variety of management positions and became president of the Data Processing Division in 1964.
During his tenure as chief executive at IBM, he presided over a period of rapid growth in product, revenue and profit.
His most notable accomplishment was recognizing that the personal computer was going to be an emerging product category that could ultimately be a threat to IBM.
[need quotation to verify] Consequently, he forced the creation of a special, small dedicated group to spearhead an answer to Apple, within IBM but totally protected from the internal bureaucracy of a large corporation.
He also served on boards of many nonprofit organizations, including the American Museum of Natural History and Rockefeller University.