Michael Dell built Dell Inc. on process innovation by assembling and selling personal computers at low cost rather than product innovation. While Dell relied on suppliers for components, it was forced to innovate as competitors introduced new models. Dell has since driven innovation in areas like e-commerce, mobile computing, cloud computing and virtualization. Customer-driven innovation is at Dell's forefront, where it gathers requirements and partners with suppliers to deliver solutions meeting customer needs. Innovation is again key to Dell's survival strategy as the PC market declines.

1. Analysis & Outlook
Michael Dell built Dell Inc. not on the basis of product innovation but on the basis of the process
innovation and adding value to the customers by offering them an easy and affordable way of
buying a personal computer. It boiled out down totally to execution where in Dell executed a
unique strategy of assembling personal computers using components sourced from multiple
suppliers, marketing and selling hard, buying at lower prices and building low priced personal
computers for the customers who were buying computers in large numbers and are looking for
more powerful machines that was very new at that time. Dell was built not on the platform of
innovation but the core focus was assembling and selling personal computers at low cost and
price and Dell soon became a multibillion dollar company and largest maker of computers in the
world. Since Dell was not innovating, the company relied on its suppliers like Microsoft, Intel,
etc. to innovate in terms of the components that are being used by Dell to assemble personal
computers. But things started to change in the personal computers industry when major players
in the industry like IBM till it sold its PC business to Lenovo, Hewlett Packard, Apple, started
innovating new models and products in the personal computer industry and Dell was also forced
to start innovation within their company too.
Michael Dell in a 2010 interview published in Times of India highlighted that Dell drove a fair
amount of innovation in the computing industry throughout its history and these innovations by
Dell have certainly helped define what the company really is and also more importantly have
helped millions of customers achieve their own goals. Dell is an internet pioneer and they have
influenced the ecommerce industry in 1990s through Dell.com and even today they are using
internet to listen , engage and respond to customers through social networking sites that give
valuable insight into what they need and how Dell can help. Dell has also revolutionized the
mobile computing industry when they were the first company to introduce a longer-life battery
option with Lithium-ion technology in Dell laptops that allowed customers to use their laptops
for the longer duration. Dell is further adding innovative features into mobility computing
solutions like shock absorbers that prevent data loss to backlit keyboards to help users be
productive at night to creating the world's thinnest laptop. Dell has driven key innovations is in
cloud computing and virtualization.
Innovation Approach @ Dell
Innovation at Dell is customer driven innovation wherein they adopted a time-tested process that
puts the customer first. It is aimed at producing easy-to-use products, services and solutions that
address [the customer's] needs. Dell's research and development (R&D) efforts now span the
globe, driven by some of the industry's foremost product designers and engineers. Dell gather
requirements directly through tens of thousands of customer interactions daily, organized events,
social media venues and customer panels and along with partnerships with a wide variety of key
industry software, hardware and component suppliers the company has complete view of the
brad computing industry landscape and the changes that are happening in the industry. Most of
Innovation @ Dell Inc. – Customer Driven innovation at the forefront

2. Analysis & Outlook
the company’s innovations begin in-house, led by a global team of top engineers, product
designers and technical experts and for other innovations Dell teams up with strategic partners
with a mission is to deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions that meet real-life customer
challenges and work seamlessly in existing environments and with other products. Dell
maintains strong internal development capabilities and uses partnership strategies rather than
competition strategy with top industry technology suppliers and original development
manufacturers.
Dell also enables building industry standards and technologies through industry groups and
strategic partners. Dell's industry leadership places it in a unique position to help establish the
core building blocks for the future innovation — in the home, the office and the enterprise. Dell
influences the development and certification of industry-standard technologies through
participation in various boards and technical working groups of key standards organizations,
including these groups like Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) a wired and wireless
interoperable network of PCs, consumer electronics and mobile devices enabling a seamless
environment for sharing and growing new digital media and content services, Distributed
Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF), is the industry organization leading the development,
adoption and interoperability of management standards and initiatives for enterprise and internet
environments, The Free Standards Group (FSG) is an independent, nonprofit organization
dedicated to accelerating the use of free and open source software by developing and promoting
standards, The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards INCITS is the
primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications
Technologies (ICT), encompassing storage, processing, transfer, display, management,
organization and retrieval of information, etc. Other groups include Internet Engineering Task
force, InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards, Information Technology
Industry Council, Storage Networking Industry Association, and Wi-Fi Alliance.
The Dell Think Tank program brings together industry leaders who are particularly vocal in
social media to discuss trending topics impacted by technology. The goal is to create an open and
honest forum that fosters collaboration and reveals unique community needs and opportunities
for technology to play a larger role. For Dell and their partners, the social think tanks are an
opportunity to listen firsthand, discuss business needs and foster relationships with participants
and their respective communities. It also gives Dell and co-hosts an opportunity to capture
meaningful feedback to better serve our various audiences. Since 2011, they have held think
tanks on topics including education, healthcare, entrepreneurship and the changing mobile
workforce. Events are in person and extended online for virtual participation on Twitter and via
Livestream. Also the Dell Fellows program recognizes engineers who are top innovators in the
engineering community and who innovate through ingenuity, intellectual curiosity and
inventiveness in delivering technology solutions to customers for their outstanding and sustained
technical achievements, engineering contributions and advancement of the industry.

3. Analysis & Outlook
Many technical initiatives have been launched by Dell in green Computing, Cloud Computing,
Virtualization, etc. and most of these technical initiatives are focused towards Dell Business
Customers or corporate customers wherein Dell is a very important player in the servers and
storage market globally. Dell five years back launched 'Simplify IT' strategy wherein Dell
committed to reducing complexity and costs for its enterprise customers and turn their IT
investment into a significant business driver. In a typical IT spends, about 70 per cent goes into
maintenance, and only 30 per cent is for innovation. Dell had been committed to reversing this
ratio-- not just driving innovation within Dell's own products and services, but also facilitating
innovation for customers with Dell solutions. Some of the most significant Dell innovations have
been in the enterprise space, especially with its energy-efficient and scalable enterprise solutions
through its highly energy-efficient PowerEdge servers and Dell's industry-leading work in
bringing virtualization into the mainstream for storage and server consolidation also have played
a significant role in creating energy-efficient data centers.
Innovation is back at the forefront of Dell survival strategy as the company is facing trouble due
to the falling personal computer sales and customers shifting their buying towards the mobile
devices like tablets and smartphones that help them to browse and stay updated on internet that is
slowly killing the personal computing market both the desktops and laptops which is the core
business of Dell Inc. Recently the leveraged buyout proposal by Michael Dell, the founder of the
company involves innovating new products and services that will help company to overcome the
sift in the technology preferences and also built new product and service offerings.According to
Cindy Shaw, analyst with Discern Group Inc., Dell must innovate, but this innovation is most
likely to occur in the business model, not technology. “That is the lower-cost way to innovate,
and that is what Michael Dell knows how to do.” It could combine its assets, including Quest
Software, with Microsoft products such as the Azure cloud to create simple, easy to implement
cloud services for its customers. “People need help, and Dell could innovate around services that
make things easier for the customer,” Shaw said.