Steady as she goes

摘要

"IT'S a normal transition," says VirginX ia "Ginni" Rometty. Her promotion to chief executive of ibm, announced on October 25th, was carefully planned and smoothly executed—unlike recent changes at the top of Yahoo!, hp and Nokia.Yet the transition is also exceptional. In January, when she takes over from Sam Palmisano, the blonde, straight-talking Ms Rometty will become one of the corporate world's most powerful women, ibm boasts annual revenues of $100 billion and a market capitalisation exceeding $210 billion-second only to Apple among tech firms. "Change at the top does not mean a change of strategy," insists Ms Rometty. She worked with Mr Palmisano (who will remain as chairman) to develop the firm's "roadmap to 2015", which states that ibm wants to double its earnings per share by that year and ramp up growth in China and India. Ms Rometty has played a key part in two moves that have made such an ambitious growth strategy seem possible: the acquisition of the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which she helped integrate, and the development of ibm's delivery centres for it services in China and India, ibm's latest growth strategy, Ms Rometty points out, is in its early phases, so in no need of being changed-at least for now.