"Fahlenbrach has a few theories on why founder-CEOs seem to be better corporate stewards. One is that they simply care more. Their companies are their life's work, so they're more likely to embrace long-term strategies. Supporting the theory is Fahlenbrach's finding that founder-run companies have bigger capital budgets and invest considerably more in research and development than nonfounder-run firms."

Interesting theory, and we shall see. It appears in Dell's case that the company was an asset transfer machine which resulted in a much higher asset accumulation for Dell the founder than for Dell the company. Also, under the founder's previous reign, the company invested in no R&D using only industry standard technology. The performance was from the then unique distribution chain and the production delivery process.

Time will tell. This is going to be a fun one to watch.

Well, I don't know if the changing of the guard, again, will help them.

I think Dell needs to remember that customers are not a disposable commodity.

Customers will not tolerate being put on hold, being disconnect and not called back, and definitely not taking months to fix a problem with their Dell PC.

My family experienced this issue with trying to get a laptop fixed, for my niece, who was in college. She eventually had to use someone else's computer to finish out the year, since her $2400 laptop(with full replacement warranty) was not working correctly.

Having paid 2/3 of the cost for that PC, I ended up taking over the task(though I a few states away), because I am both PC savvy and know how to deal with tech support double talk.

Again, this was on a PC that had the full replacement warranty. It seemed like a good idea at the time, since the PC was for a college student; the hope was to minimize downtime in the case of a major problem.

Eventually, after a lot of phone calls, frustration, and, yes, patience, the problem was finally fixed. This happened right after I mentioned something about filing a complaint with my state's attorney general.

Unfortunately for Dell, I often help friends and family make PC buying decisions. Since then, no one that has asked my advice has bought a Dell PC.

Reputation is also not a disposable commodity.

As a founder of a company I can not possibly imaging having the same passion working for someone else. I would also suggest that a founder would have a more indepth understanding from a ground up level of what it took to create a successful company.

Craig Cameron
Founder Web and Flo