IBM rocks Had a great day at Lotus today, chatting with Gary Cohen and Sean Martin of Sash fame about IBM and where it was going. Some of it was around distribution, which sounds kind of boring but often turns out to be the scarcest complement, and so ends up making all of the money. IBM has distribution in spades, but this also makes it hard for them to capitalize on their (remarkable) research -- their channels are specialized and ill suited to new, unproven products. This rigidity is why start-ups have any hope at all.