IBM has long seen itself not as a computer or electronics company but as a marketing company. Their approach to marketing is to have salesmen in branch offices selling to businesses.  Long they sold <i>business machines</i> for routine business record keeping.<p>They are still trying to sell, sell something, via those branch offices to those businesses but they have run out of things to sell.  And the sales culture is not good at thinking of good, new products&#x2F;services to sell.