Yesterday I was in a talk given by Alan Deutschman, a former journalist and the author of the book Walk the Walk. He was giving an example about the leadership and cultural shift at IBM in the late 90s. He shared an experience he had recently when he visited the new IBM headquarters in NY.
While there some executives took him over to their original world headquarters. As they were driving up to the old headquarters, Deutschman noticed the road was lined with old apple trees (an irony lost on most people in the room I would imagine) and that the road was named Apple Orchard Road. He asked if this had once been an orchard, and was told that indeed it had been before IBM purchased the land back in the 60s. Deutschman then asked why, back in the 60s when all businesses wanted to be in the heart of global commerce in Midtown Manhattan, did IBM want to be 40 miles away in the middle of an apple orchard. The answer was quite surprising.
It turns out tat IBM wanted to make sure that in the even of a nuclear attack on New York by the Russians the would survive. They determined how far the radiation would reach, and then drew a circle around Manhattan to determine where to put their headquarters.
IBM was convinced that the world could not function without them and that nuclear war was pretty darn likely. I guess that's one way of picking real estate.
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