cover image Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry

Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry

Michael Dell. HarperCollins Publishers, $26 (236pp) ISBN 978-0-88730-914-4

The results are impressive: a 19 year-old with $1000 starts a company, remains at the helm and on top of changes in the industry for 10 years, and watches the stock rise 36,000% over another decade as his company becomes the second largest maker of PCs in the world, and the largest in the U.S. The founder of the Dell Computer Corporation uses anecdotes from his entrepreneurial life and his company's history to illustrate the ""direct model"" he developed to do it--one that eliminates the middleman via a host of direct-marketing media and incorporates a full-blown philosophy of doing business. While most of that philosophy's components are familiar (internally, ""Reward Success by Narrowing Responsibility""; externally, ""Teach Innovative Thinking""; ""Retail: First in, First out""; ""Hyperlink to the Future""), seeing how Dell put these theories into practice will sustain a reader's interest. Rightly, the custom-built and directly shipped computers that are the company's signature product get the most airtime. While the book, like nearly all in its CEO-authored subgenre, is heavy on self-congratulatory propaganda (""The spirit of the company that remains today was beginning to take hold""), Dell makes an agreeable maverick. (Mar.)