In commerce, in 2016, we have the sharing economy. In IT, we have what Bob Lord, chief digital officer at IBM’s Digital Business Group, calls the “builder society.” And of course IBM Corp. wants to be part of it.

Lord discussed the builder society and the evolution of IBM with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Furrier (@furrier), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during IBM World of Watson 2016 in Las Vegas, NV.

Lord said the industry is seeing more builders rather than purely developers who “create new business units and solve problems.” He explained that the component of codes coming out is very user-friendly. “So the next generation of kids know HTML5. That’s their second language,” he said. “At IBM, we can advance how we present ourselves to this new builder society and imbed IBM solutions within that society.”

The developer journey

A builder society focus ties into a focus on the developer journey. “They want to have fun,” Lord said. “They want to interact; they want to play with code. We have to present our solutions in a way that’s playful.”

This is a different way of thinking for IBM’s digital business group, which is tasked with opening up the digital storefront. “We want to take all the great work we’ve done with Watson and with IoT and bring those services to developers, to startups, and to entrepreneurs,” Lord said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM World of Watson 2016.

*Disclosure: IBM and other companies sponsor some IBM World of Watson segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE