Innovation @ Dell Inc. – Customer Driven innovation at the forefront

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 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.

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.