One of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories in the IT world is Dell Inc. (called PC’s Limited at the time) founded by Michael Dell in 1984. As Brian Wong said, entrepreneurship is about creating value out of nothing, it’s about seeing an opportunity and finding an innovative approach to capitalize. This is exactly what Michael Dell started in 1984. He saw a rising opportunity in the PC market and came up with an innovative way to capitalize. Because personal computers are a fairly low margin product, minimizing or limiting fixed costs is extremely important. Dell believed he could capitalize on the rising use of the internet and eliminate the massive fixed costs associated with operating retail storefront by selling his products online. This also allowed the company to provide “mass specialization” as internal parts are very interchangeable, making it very easy to substitute products in the manufacturing process to fit individual customer needs. Not something you can easily do in a retail store. By basing all his sales online, he also dramatically cut down his inventory turnover ratio as they didn’t need to produce stock months in advance only to have them sit on shelves in retail stores. This is an extreme advantage in the IT sector considering the rapid price depreciation of products. Michael Dell can be considered a very successful entrepreneur as he fits all four of the characteristics given in Quick MBA’s definition of an entrepreneur. He created a huge amount of wealth in the company (he’s worth an estimated $12.5 billion), he managed to create this wealth in a relatively short period of time, there was a considerable amount of risk involved, and finally he used a highly innovative company method that established their competitive advantage in the market.
On November 5th and 6th, I, along with three other first year Sauder students, were able to participate in the 4th Annual CMA Case Competition held at the Coast Coal Harbor Hotel in downtown Vancouver. I considered it a great opportunity to utilize my newly acquired skills and knowledge from university, into a real world situation, all the while practicing my analytical and presentation skills. It was quite amazing how many times, over the course of the night, we found ourselves drawing upon different resources we had be taught in our various university courses (particularly Comm 101 and Organizational Behavior) as we were continually regurgitating terms and theories, just recently learned in the the respective classes. It was truly inspiring to really see the usefulness and practicality these courses had in real life business situations. The biggest takeaway from this case competition was how many different fields we had to draw from in order to reach our conclusion, putting further emphasis on the values a general course like Comm 101 has displayed. It dislayed the true importance of the bridges between different fields of business, and showcased that in todays world, versatility really is the key to a persons success. Gone are the days of mass specialization and departmentalization. In todays business economy, employees must be able to adapt and flourish in the ever changing environment, that is todays dynamic business world.