Thomas John Watson Sr. was the president of IBM during its years of spectacular growth in the 1920s through the 1950s. It was during this time that he nurtured IBM's innovative management style, which, until recently, kept Big Blue at the top of the global IT league. Fast approaching 400,000 employees worldwide, IBM remains the world's largest IT employer; although, a couple of years ago, Hewlett-Packard overtook it based on total revenue (but not profit). read more »