Michael Dell shares wisdom with Australian developer

When John Owen packed his bags and boarded a plane for Delhi at the weekend for a once-in-a-lifetime meeting with Michael Dell, he packed his laptop, toothbrush and a brace of questions.

In an informal chat with the founder of the world's biggest PC maker, the chief executive officer of Melbourne software developer QSR soon learned that Dell was a man of action to whom risk was part of life.

"You need to fail to learn, and that is the way you often grow and expand companies - by learning and experience," Owen said was the chief point he took away from the hour he spent with Dell.

"You must be prepared to take risk, it's important."

Dell used the example that he would rather have "10 projects start and have seven of them successful, rather than five project starts and five of them successful".

"That was his view on it. It was certainly very strong," said Owen.

And Dell urged businesses to "try new things, all the time and constantly experiment".

"If it doesn't work, move on to the next one and experiment again," Owen said was the advice.

And he heard how recognising and managing talentwas critical to success.

"Recognising and nurturing your talent and ensuring that their talent can grow with the organisation to assist its growth and expansion."

Owen said all the points were "very relevant and important" to his business.

"We're a very innovative company, we do look to expansion through innovation and those take away points were relevant and of course people are incredibly important for us."

Owen was the Australian winner of the Dell global Small Business Excellence Awards, which included an audience with the company's founder and $US25,000 in Dell products. He also hard presentations from experts at Dell, Google and Microsoft.

Owen told CRN that the meeting was fairly informal, "motivational and certainly an opportunity".

"It was really a question-and-answer session with Michael [Dell] to get his ideas on some of the key challenges that I suppose everybody faces these days. And obviously his views on where he thinks technology is going," Owen said.

The Australian company was a runner-up in the event that drew from 12 countries.

The global winner of the Dell award was SuitThatFits.com, a British small business that designed and made high-fashion tailored suits.

QSR International develops qualitative research software that analyses unstructured data. QSR software helps businesses to access, manage, shape and analyse detailed textual, audio and visual information.

The company was awarded the Dell award in Australia last year in recognition of its ability to use technology to better serve its global customers.

QSR's flagship products - NVivo and XSight - are developed in Australia for export to more than 150 countries.

Owen said Dell also talked about future technologies, specifically about the growth potential for smart devices and content management.

"People want to watch TV when it suits them they want to choose what they want to watch."

And while in India, QSR took Dell's advice to heart and met with Austrade to look at opportunities in the Indian market.

"We do have representation in India through a partner that we have in Malaysia and they represent us in in India," he said.

Caption: from left to right: Adam Long, chief technology officer, QSR International; John Owen, CEO QSR International; Michael Dell, CEO, chairman and founder of Dell; Karen Thomas, marketing director, QSR International