IBM celebrates its 100th anniversary today, June 16. Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, takes a look back at what has kept Big Blue going for so long.

Apple and Microsoft have been in business for more than three decades, Google has been around for 12 years, and Twitter's just getting started with five years under its belt. But all of these tech giants have a long way to go to reach the 100-year milestone that Big Blue is celebrating today.

On this day in 1911, IBM started as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R), a name it changed in 1924. While some of you might known IBM for its recent , IBM has a long history of innovation, from cheese slicers (yes, really) and the tech behind Social Security to the UPC bar code and the floppy disk.

These days, a 100-year run is quite the feat, especially in technology. Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, attributed this longevity partly to the development of technology that contributes something to society, as well as being open to diverse and sometimes risky projects.

In 2008, IBM kicked off its Smarter Planet initiative, which focused on improving how the world works. That includes everything from using data to improve traffic patterns, deploying pollution-detecting tech to places like Ireland's Galway Bay, and using analytics to predict rainfall and build up a region's water supply.

"We just had an incredible 100-year run because we never lost sight of how important it is to innovate," Meyerson said in a Wednesday interview. "The fact is, innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. We practiced diversity long before it was a legal requirement because we value it [and] it does enable us to be innovative."

"If you're real smart, we'll find something to do with you," he said.

Can a Google or a Facebook last 100 years? Meyerson said "they need to be much more diverse."

"It's a long way from a cheese slicer to changing the entire infrastructure of a nation," he said. "You have to have this broad spectrum because it gives you vision. To avoid these disasters that befall companies where they literally vanish overnight, you have to have your eyes open, constantly looking about. It is possible to live that length of time, but you have to reinvent yourself on an almost daily basis."

One of the most notable leaps of faith IBM took was in 1964 with the introduction of System/360, a family of computers that started the era of computer compatibility. The company invested $5 billion in the technology, about $30 billion today, but the gamble paid off.

"It essentially changed the world and allowed IBM to dominate computing for decades," Meyerson said.

The forecast hasn't always been rosy for IBM, however. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company essentially missed the boat on the PC and client/server revolutions.

"Both revolutions transformed the way customers viewed, used and bought technology," according to IBM. "And both fundamentally rocked IBM. Businesses' purchasing decisions were put in the hands of individuals and departments - not the places where IBM had long-standing customer relationships."

IBM responded by naming Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. as IBM's chairman and CEO, the first Big Blue chief who didn't come up the IBM ranks. He took a more customer-oriented approach and made dramatic cuts across the board. There was talk of splitting IBM into separate companies, but Gerstner decided against it.

Meyerson said that leadership helped IBM through some dark times.

"It requires you to look death in the eye and say I'm not going to fold," he said. "One of the remarkable things about the IBM company is that we do not fold. It's just not part of the culture."

"We suffered mightily because of errors we made; nobody's perfect," Meyerson continued. "But the company has a sense of resilience that's virtually unprecedented and unmatched."

Like many companies, one of IBM's focuses going forward will be the cloud. But thinking ahead, Meyerson said a real challenge will be organizing all the data on the Web so that it doesn't become noise.

"You have to get really smart about how you do things and have real-time networks ... with the ability to filter out the garbage," he said. But that's a "huge challenge we haven't even begun to address." One of the issues is how to remove the noise without also stripping out things you need, he said.

Innovations like Watson, meanwhile, will also probably be useful beyond game-show entertainment. Meyerson pointed to the healthcare field. Rather than search the Web for "high fever, slight rash, and nausea," a doctor could speak to a Watson device as they would anyone else, and Watson could "think" about it, and interpret that data in a much more useful way.

It couldn't replace doctors, but "it's the ultimate reference, like having a genius sitting on your shoulder who doesn't get tired," Meyerson said. A challenge for the next 100 years, most likely.

For more on IBM's innovations over the last century, see the slideshow above.