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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daiju Kohno who wrote (719)	3/8/1999 8:56:00 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Sorry Daiju, Dell is a "Prince". Your point of view is the most common error on this tread. Dell does so well that the people who have made a bundle on them, (including me!) want them to be a gorilla. Having a top distribution system is not a "discontinuous innovation". We are looking for a technical breakthrough on this item. The PC market is certainly in hypergrowth, but there is no switching cost to using other PC manufacturers, you can buy the same box from others. Compaq is the "King" of this business. The best you could say for Dell is that it is the "King" of direct sales. Great company! -LindyBill

To: Daiju Kohno who wrote (719)	3/8/1999 10:11:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

DK, Great post. Welcome to the folder! Although it does not fit exactly... For me, that IS the point, that it doesn't fit exactly. A gorilla or potential gorilla is somewhat unique because the issues we examine DO fit exactly. There are very few gorillas compared to all the companies we might examine, mostly because there are very few companies whose characteristics exactly fit the authors' definition of a gorilla. Having said that, I've said ever since having read the book that it's important that we recognize the fits that aren't exact because lots of non-gorillas make great investments. Ahem, Dell is one of them. :) Understanding the essence of a business is one heck of a lot more important than agreeing on the exact label that does or doesn't exactly fit. As an example, I just attended a regional sales meeting with about 300 people. A lot of the themes of continuous and discontinuous innovations were discussed but those terms were never used. My employer is clearly not in the high-tech business. Having learned that the top two people on the executive management team have not read Gorilla Game, I sent them copies of the book. They aren't running a high-tech company, but there's no question in my mind that most of the stuff applies to virtually any business to some degree, even if to a very slight degree. --Mike Buckley