At age 40, Watson was thrown a curve ball that, like that first sentence says, nearly ruined him. In fact, it sent him so low that this shaped his character more than anything that had happened to him earlier in his lifetime. It sent him to the lower depths and resulted in him being given the reigns of an equally down-in-the dumps loser business just to get rid of him. He was banished to a corporate Siberia. He was considered a loser, and given a loser's position in a loser's business.

It's at this point that he reshaped and remade that company into what is today known as IBM. The blue suits and white shirts that were the uniform of IBM men became so because he wore one every day. There was no written rule that employees had to wear them; they did it because he did it. That says something: he led by example and his employees admired him.

Just as an aside, it seems that Watson's big thing was that things didn't happen (or went wrong) because people didn't think hard enough. To encourage employees to think he had big "THINK" signs put all over the company. This evolved into "Think" buttons, and employees were even allowed and encouraged to kick back and think. Eventually, small notepads were emblazoned with "Think" and they were called "Thinkpads." Hence, the name of the laptop.

THINK, by the way, is the reason that the company created so many technological innovations.