In IBM we frequently refer to our need for “wild ducks.” The moral is drawn from a story by the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. He told of a man on the coast of Zealand who liked to watch the wild ducks fly south in great flocks each fall. Out of charity, he took to putting feed for them in a nearby pond. After a while some of the ducks no longer bothered to fly south; they wintered in Denmark on what he fed them.

In time they flew less and less. When the wild ducks returned, the others would circle up to greet them but then head back to their feeding grounds on the pond. After three or four years they grew so lazy and fat that they found difficulty in flying at all.

Kierkegaard drew his point—you can make wild ducks tame, but you can never make tame ducks wild again. One might also add that the duck who is tamed will never go anywhere any more. We are convinced that any business needs its wild ducks. And in IBM we try not to tame them.

From Thomas J. Watson, Jr.’s A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas that Helped Build IBM, New York, Toronto, and London: McGraw-Hill, 1963, pp. 27-28.