Another lesson we’ve learned is that you can’t follow the other guys. If you take the approach of saying, ‘Competitor X has a good business, let’s be just like them’, that’s not going to create a lot of value…It doesn’t mean that we won’t borrow good ideas from other companies when we see them, but we’re not held to convention and we’re not striving to be like other companies…We are building our own path.
Michael Dell (b. 1965) US chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation. Speech to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Technology Conference, Dallas. ‘Maximum Speed: Lessons Learned from Managing Hypergrowth’ (10 September 1998)