John T. Chambers

John T. Chambers

Personal Background

John Chambers was born on August 23, 1949 in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in the in the 1950s in Charleston, West Virginia, with a personal background that could not be described as provincial. His father was a famous obstetrician and gynecologist and his mother was a psychologist. Chambers's family ran a restaurant in Charleston, and that is where he first got the idea of starting his own business someday.

Chambers suffered from dyslexia as a child and that placed a very negative effect on his studies. Even then, he was a very optimistic child and had a strong will-power, which can be seen even now when he talks (Pearce et. al, 2009). He later on became famous for his single-mindedness as he worked harder and more diligently towards studies in order to compensate for his disability, and caused him to eventually achieve an undergraduate and also a law degree from West Virginia University. Due to the circumstances in his state, he left for Indiana University located in Bloomington and pursued a business degree over there, losing interest in practice of law.

Professional background

Chambers had realized that his future was going to be related to business so he accepted a job offer given by IBM in the year 1976. IBM ruled in the computer industry at that time and was powerful, massive, and commonly known as Big Blue. IBM released their most successful computer of all time, the System 360. Chambers felt that it was a shortcoming for IBM that it focused only on typewriters and business computers while other companies like Apple were emerging in the era of personal computers (Ireland et. al, 2008). This caused the management to tell the customer what he needed instead of the customer telling them what he required, ...