Something juicy happens at IBM - well, actually at Lenovo

Ooh, juicy gossip! A management shake up right at the top of Lenovo. Which means there was an internal tussle. And Lenovo is half ex IBM's PC division so indirectly this means that some juicy gossip almost came out from the somewhat yawny IBM. Wow!

The official line looks somwthing like this - Steve Ward, a veteran IBM executive who had become the first leader of the ambitious Chinese-US corporate experiment, left in what both he and the company characterised as a move to bring an executive with skills more suited to the top job at the world’s third largest PC maker. He was replaced by Bill Amelio, head of Dell’s Asia-Pacific operations and himself a former IBM executive.

Which is corporate mumbo jumbo voodoo talk for Ward, the big company strategic/managementy guy, had a scrap with the entrepreneurial, fast moving, cowboy, hands-on founder and guess who lost.

But of course I could have it wrong. Amelio looks to me to be more of a number 2 type. I'd say this is about Lenovo and their erstwhile founder and Chairman getting back some control. Mind you, the group's got a lot of work ahead of them, so they may as well deal with such leadership issues early on. If they want to be the worlds number 1 PC maker some day they need to move at the speed of light.