IBM is one of the oldest technology companies in the world, with a raft of innovations to its credit, including mainframe computing, computer-programming languages, and AI-powered tools. But ask an ordinary person under the age of 40 what exactly IBM does (or did), and the responses will be vague at best. "Something to do with computers, right?" was the best the Gen Zers I queried could come up with. If a Millennial knows anything about IBM, it's Watson, the company's prototype AI system that prevailed on Jeopardy in 2011. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. In the chronicles of garage entrepreneurship, however, IBM retains a legendary place--as a flat-footed behemoth.

Before Siri and Alexa, there was Watson. Appearing as a contestant on "Jeopardy!" made IBM's Watson a household name. But since its debut -- and win -- in 2011, the computer has morphed into something else entirely: An artificial intelligence tool for business. The company opened up Watson in the cloud wars, making the technology available on competitors' clouds last month. Behind the Watson branding are career technologists making the tool work for business customers.

We have been hearing a lot lately on the topic of American greatness, where it went, and how to reclaim it. But greatness is complicated, and our ideas of what is great and what is not have changed over time. In this column, I ask what the history of one mighty corporation--IBM--can tell us about the rise and fall of a particular kind of American greatness. Decade after decade, IBM has been one of the world's largest, most profitable, and most admired companies. Of all American businesses, only General Electric, Apple, Microsoft, and Exxon-Mobile have generated more wealth.a Despite recent troubles, it has been ranked in the 2010s as the number one company for leaders (Fortune), the greenest company (Newsweek), the second most valuable global brand (Interbrand), the second most respected company (Barron's) and the fifth most admired (Fortune). IBM technical contributions to computing are second to none. Its researchers won six Turing awards and, more startling, four Nobel prizes. Its engineers produced the first hard disk drive, the first floppy disk drive, the first architecture implemented over a range of diverse but compatible machines, the first widely used high-level programming language, the relational database, the first scientific supercomputer, the first RISC designs, and the first DRAM chip. As recently as 2014, IBM ranked ahead of its old adversary Microsoft on Fortune's lists of the largest U.S. companies (20th place) and of the firms most admired by managers (16th place). In ways good and bad, IBM has been at the forefront of changes in American business and in America's relationships with the world.

Over a century old and recognized the world over, International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) is the quintessential blue-chip stock. Even its nickname, Big Blue, conjures images of the company's vaunted history among America's business elite. IBM's history contains far more wins than losses; a company couldn't exist for over a century otherwise. However, the current threats facing the company suggest that IBM's stock history is far more complex than it might seem. With the S&P 500 currently trading at a P/E of almost 25, investors should ask why IBM, which 26 sell-side analysts cover, trades at so significant a discount to the market.