Both IBM and the Carnegie Corporation will turn 100 this month. Has the multinational business or universal philanthropy done more for society?
“ONE simple way to assess the impact of any organisation is to answer the question: how is the world different because it existed?” That is the test set out by Sam Palmisano in the foreword to a new book celebrating the 100th birthday of IBM, the firm he has run since 2002. But another organisation is also turning 100 this month—the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a flagship of American philanthropy. Mr Palmisano’s insight is too good to limit to only one of the centenarians. A better question is: which has done more for the world, one of its leading companies or one of its most influential charities?
At first glance, IBM and the Carnegie Corporation seem to be engaged in such different endeavours that comparing them might seem about as sensible as comparing apple orchards and orange groves. Making money has always been the main aim of the company formed in 1911 by the merger of three small producers of mechanical accounting machines, scales and time recorders, and renamed International Business Machines 13 years later. By contrast, the Carnegie Corporation explicitly set out to create a better world by giving away what remained of the great fortune of its industrialist founder, Andrew Carnegie. Yet both can assert that they have made the world a better place during the past century, and it is far from obvious which claim is stronger. ...
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