It set the agenda for the other multinationals that shift disposable items in unfathomable bulk.
Starbucks, like Amazon, Google and Vodafone, the other multinationals who pay little corporation tax in the UK, has not broken any law.
Its smoothly effective boss, Nandan Nilekani, spends time building the sort of friendships with other chief executives that IBM bosses have had for decades and regard as crucial in winning contracts.IBM and the other multinationals are becoming increasingly nervous about the fifth-biggest Indian outsourcer, HCL Technologies.
So far, the other multinationals haven't geared up for the shift.
Progress on the minimum wage, and on workers' rights at Walmart, McDonald's and the other multinational corporations that depend on public subsidies for their workers, will come not from a stroke of the president's pen, but from the concerted efforts of workers and their allies, from the streets to the voting booths.
"We sent a real, clear message to the other multinational corporations that we're not bluffing, that we are truly going to follow up... and they need to take it seriously," Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, told The Huffington Post in a phone call from South Korea.
What if, Lynn asks, "the extreme economic interdependence between the United States and China is not actually carrying our values into a backward and benighted realm, but accomplishing precisely the opposite -- granting the Chinese Politburo ever-increasing leverage over America's economic and political life?" And, one might add, leverage over all the other multinational host countries?
Which is why, some would argue, the desire of Apple and other multinationals to minimise the taxes they pay in the US, or anywhere for that matter, may be rational for them individually but is bonkers for them collectively - since over time it will erode the very infrastructure of the global economy which allows them to thrive.
But Mexico's poor schools the worst in the OECD mean that drug exporters face the same problems as other multinationals in attracting highly skilled workers.
The HMRC decision could also have ramifications for the tax affairs of other multinationals, such as Amazon and Apple, that use similar arrangements to minimise their UK tax bill.
The big, career-threatening question facing Mr Palmisano and the reason other multinational companies will want to study IBM closely is whether he can find a new way to realise the growth that his shareholders demand.In a speech last year at INSEAD business school in France, Mr Palmisano set IBM's Indian move in the context of the modern multinational company.
