Reinventing Dell

The Innovation Imperative

Heather Simmons

• Publisher: Heather Simmons
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780994890610
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

“Knowing that an asteroid is going to hit the earth is not really useful if you are not planning to launch missiles to knock it out of the sky. You have to work massively overtime on the belief that innovation or massive change is going to happen.” — Tom Martin, former VP of marketing

Dell was once listed by Fortune as the most admired company in the world, and held the #1 market share in personal computing. Between 1991 and 1999, Dell’s stock price outperformed that of its next closest competitor by a factor of 20 times - only to lose 70 percent of its value by 2009. Reinventing Dell is the inside story of one of tech’s most intriguing giants.

In this essential new text, innovation expert Heather Simmons asks: How did Dell go from one of the most admired companies in the world to a firm whose stock flatlined for the better part of a decade? More importantly, how might it come back?

Reinventing Dell turns Dell’s rise, fall, and emergent return into cogent lessons that business leaders can’t do without. Simmons combines exclusiveinterviews from former Dell employees, seminal innovation thinking from authors such as Linda Hill and Clayton Christensen, and her own framework, the Intelligent Gambler ©, to analyze Dell’s innovation potential.

Revealing, funny, and incredibly useful, Heather Simmons’s Reinventing Dell is a must-read for leaders in the digital age.

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Notes

Introduction

1. Johnson, Steven, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, New York: Penguin Group LLC, 2014, p. 30.
2. Harte, John, Management Crisis and Business Revolution, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2014, p. 126.

ONE

1. Company annual reports.
2. Various reports and press releases from Gartner Group and International Data Corporation (“IDC”).
3. Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, and Dell closing costs, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/vn/corporate-secure-en/documents-dell-closing-costs.pdf.
4. Dell annual reports and Dell closing costs, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/vn/corporate-secure-en/documents-dell-closing-costs.pdf.
5. Hester, Liz, “Dell Goes Private in Biggest LBO Since 2007,” February 6, 2013. Retrieved from http://talkingbiznews.com/2/dell-goes-private-in-biggest-lbo-since-2007/.

TWO

1. Fortuna, Steven, “Compaq Reengineers the Channel: Will It Be Enough to Slow Dell’s Momentum?” Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Technology Group Research Report, 1997, p. 6.
2. Fisher, Lawrence, “Inside Dell Computer Corporation: Managing Working Capital,” 1998. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/article/9571?gko=d8c29.
3. Dell Inc., “Dell Quarterly Report 10Q for the Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2014,” 2014, p. 51.
4. IBM, “IBM Annual Report 2013,” 2013, pp. 70-72.
5. Hewlett-Packard, “Hewlett-Packard 10k Report Fiscal Year 2012,” 2012, p. 67.

Three

1. Augustine, Norman (chair), Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010, p. vii.
2. Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, New York, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1950, pp. 81-86.
3. Augustine, Norman (chair), Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005, p. 1.
4. Augustine, Norman (chair), Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010, p. 5.
5. Ibid., pp. 6-11.
6. Hill, Linda, Brandeau, Greg, Truelove, Emily, and Lineback, Kent, Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014, p. 11.
7. Christensen, Clayton, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997, p. xv.
8. Nisen, Max, “Clay Christensen: Our Obsession with Efficiency is Killing Innovation,” 2012. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-our-obsession-with-effici...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Revolutionary Performance
• The Direct Model
• The Innovation Imperative
• A Brief Sojourn in Academia
• The Early Years
• Culture Shift
• Reinvention
• A Few Suggestions
• Postscript
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Detailed New Markets Analysis
• Appendix B: List of Dell’s Acquisitions
• Appendix C: Public vs. Private Scenarios Supporting Detail
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author