Michael Dell and the Internet: a view from 1999

I was just reading some remarks made in 1999 by Michael Dell on Building a Competitive Advantage in an Internet Economy.


While so much has changed in the 10 years since Dell made this speech, I am struck by how much of this is still relevant in 2009.


Consider the following excerpt:

"The Internet is also decreasing the cost of interactions. For instance, instead of making printer circuit boards, Dell has a supplier that does it, whom we treat as part of our company and with whom we exchange information at very little cost and at very high speeds. The Internet is shrinking time and distance, allowing us to bring our customers and our suppliers inside our business, and creating shared efficiencies and greater loyalty. Companies that recognize this can take advantage of it; those that don’'t will end up as road kill on the information super highway."

The fact that information has become even more readily available in the last 10 years reinforces this point. This has even extended beyond business into the consumer realm with the advent of Web 2.0 and how we as consumers now embrace open and public relationships with one another on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Web 2.0 indeeds shrinks time and distance when it comes to how we now interact with each other as individuals online.

Dell's thoughts on how to build an internet based business also remain true to this day.

"We focus on three areas: (i) building rich content, (ii) growing our commerce capabilities, and (iii) establishing communities of suppliers and end users that share common interests."

While a lot of this is pretty standard - table stakes, even - in 2009, it's interesting to reflect back on what the internet was like in 1999. I know in our case at RIGHTSLEEVE, we had a static web site with html product pages that were time consuming to update. We had no e-commerce functionality other than a simple quote request tool to interact with our customers. Having said that, it was pretty unique at the time in the context of the industry. It was a start.

In the early 2000's, we evolved into a database driven web site with full e-commerce capabilities, online store applications and a backend CRM/VRM system that allows us to interact with every customer and supplier around the world online. In the process, we dramatically changed how we did business, giving us a platform on which to compete within a hyper competitive industry.

It's interesting to consider how fast internet technology has changed in the past decade. The Web 1.0 (webvan.com, pets.com) bubble has burst, Web 2.0 (youtube.com, twitter.com) has taken the world by storm and now we are starting to see the beginnings of Web 3.0 (twine.com) and the so-called semantic web.

Despite these rapid changes in the types of internet models we see today, I don't think we have strayed too far from the enduring principles that were discussed by Michael Dell in 1999.