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In today’s youth-centric tech industry, Michael Dell, at 56, is somewhat of an elder statesman. The Dell Technologies chief executive occasionally hosts dinners for young entrepreneurs at his Austin, Tex., home, where guests seek out his advice on matters of life and business. Dell was once where they are: he started a tech company as a teenager in his college dorm room and dropped out of school. Thirty-plus years later, he’s a billionaire. The details of his journey, however, are more complex. The PC assembly business he created at the University of Texas in 1984 became a Fortune 500 company that experienced dramatic twists and turns. Dell won a battle against activist investor Carl Icahn for control of his company and took Dell private in 2013. A few years later, he orchestrated the purchase of EMC Corp., one of the highest-valued tech acquisitions in history. He then took his company public again in 2018.
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Those events and others shaped Dell, who details his nearly four decades as a business trailblazer in a new book, Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader. Dell spoke with TIME about the lessons he has learned, the changing role of the CEO, and his belief that for-profit businesses have potential to make the world a better place—and be more effective than philanthropy.
(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
In the book, you talk about your growth as a leader, as well as the mistakes you made along the way. What were your most valuable mistakes?
One of the things I learned early on was that not everyone had the same values and beliefs. We had to be very explicit about what was OK and what wasn’t OK. As you expand a company, especially around the world—this is maybe not the most elegant way to put it, but—there are places in the world where if they didn’t catch you doing it, it’s…
Source : time
