William S. Anderson

William S. Anderson, former chairman of the National Cash Register Corp (NCR), has been described as decisive, elegant and straightforward in numerous national and international publications.
He also is a survivor. From fleeing the invasion of Japanese armies on his hometown of Hankow, China in 1937, surviving four years as a World War II prisoner of war and leading one of the world’s most well-known companies back to health, Mr. Anderson has faced overwhelming challenges with strength, fortitude and wisdom.
Mr. Anderson became President of NCR in 1972, and assumed the position of Chairman in 1973. He retired as Chairman of the Board in 1984.

(With excerpts from the foreword to Bill Anderson’s autobiography written by Nicholas Brady)

Mr. Bill Anderson was born in China and attended high school in Shanghai. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, he and his widowed mother fled to Hong Kong. The nearly penniless 18-year-old found a job, enrolled in night school, and won accreditation as an accountant. When Japan invaded Hong Kong in 1941, he fought alongside the British troops but was taken prisoner. After nearly four years in POW camp, he joined NCR. He completed a crash training program in London then returned to Hong Kong to rebuild NCR’s business there.

For the best part of a century, NCR was a classic example of American corporate success. Its cash register and accounting machines were the most widely used products of their kind in more than 100 countries. But by the early 1970s, NCR was struggling for survival in the new technological and competitive environment created by the computer revolution. In this time of crisis, the company’s board of directors selected Mr. Anderson as NCR’s new president. Mr. Anderson held a phenomenal record in Hong Kong and later in Japan, leading him to become NCR’s CEO in 1972 and the first non-American ever tapped to head a major US company. However, he had never worked at the firm’s Ohio headquarters, and he was scarcely known outside of NCR’s overseas organization.

Mr. Anderson moved aggressively to rejuvenate the once-great business institution. As NCR narrowly averted disaster to emerge as an innovative leader in the computer industry, the formerly unknown Far-Easterner became widely recognized as a world-class executive. Forbes portrayed him as a sophisticated and elegant manager, while in Business Week’s view, he was the decisive factor in the company’s dramatic turnaround.

Mr. Anderson shared that in the early part of his career, he did not encounter “flashes of brilliance” that made him realize which path to traverse. But even then, he had placed emphasis on managing good relations with clients and assisting them in accomplishing their goals. He added, “Everyone who reaches the top has the quiet resolve to succeed, to be at the top.”

Mr. Anderson is also the past president of the Air Force Museum Foundation and a former director of the Consolidated Natural Gas Co., Philips Industries, and RJR Nabisco, among others. He remains a trustee of the Asia Foundation and the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He received an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from the University of Dayton.

William Anderson authored:Corporate Crisis: NCR and the Computer Revolution Publisher: Landfall Press, Incorporated (January 1991) ISBN-10: 0913428744 ISBN-13: 978-0913428740