Overview. It started 21 years ago, when he was ditching classes to sell homemade PCs out of his University of Texas dorm room. Michael Dell was the scrappy underdog, fighting for his company's life against the likes of IBM and Compaq Computer Corp. with a direct-sales model that people thought was plain nuts. Now, Michael Dell is worth $17 billion, while his 40,000-employee company is about to top $40 billion in sales. Yet he continues to manage Dell …showed first 75 words of 3751 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3751 total…competitors don't," says Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for eBusiness at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. Dell's expansion strategy is carefully calibrated to capitalize on that asset. The game plan is to move into commodity markets -- with standardized technology that's widely available -- where Dell can apply its skills in discipline, speed, and efficiency. Then Dell can drop prices faster than any other company and prompt demand to soar.