Necessity is the mother of all inventions, profitable or not, that is debatable. But innovation on the other hand requires a vision, with profitability of the enterprise in its heart. Back in the 1970s different companies, big and small, used IBM machines for their business needs, and built management programs on them.  Five system analysts at IBM observed that everyone was basically building the same management software for themselves, programming on similar lines by investing lots of money on in-house programming. They thought that if they could provide a solution to answer these needs of different enterprises, it would be more profitable and the set up time for these companies could be drastically reduced.