Innovation Anywhere. Do Everything with Dell

Few industries move quicker than information technology, and even fewer companies look further into the future than Dell. Having set (and met) sustainability goals in the early 2000s – far earlier than its rivals – the company now looks to the next phase of its mission to reduce its environmental impact.  

Now, one of Dell’s Moonshot 2030 goals is to reuse or recycle an equivalent product every time a customer buys something from the company. It’s a tall order for one of the industry’s most familiar brands, which is setting its sights on helping Taiwan’s SMEs make up for lost time.   

Terence Liao, general manager of Dell Taiwan, has been with the company for 14 years and is passionate about Dell’s history, achievements, and where the company is headed next. Globally, Dell is turning 40 next year, but this year it’s celebrating 35 years in Taiwan, as well as 20 years since the founding of the Taiwan Design Center, the unit responsible for 90% of the company’s product lines globally.  

“If we look back since Dell was founded in 1984, the pace of change in the industry has been considerable,” Liao says. “Now, we describe it as exponential.”     

This exponential growth, which includes the rapid development of powerful computer systems, PCs, thinner laptops, the internet, mobile, AI, and data management, is a challenge for many of Taiwan’s traditional industries, Liao explains.  

“Most companies here are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” he says. “They don’t have the resources or scale that larger companies such as Dell enjoy.”  

That is one reason Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) invited Dell to work on a program that assists SMEs with digital transformation and environmental stewardship, ensuring that they can remain competitive in a market where consumers and big brands increasingly care about the environmental footprint of products. As around 98% of Taiwan’s economy is made up of SMEs, it is a daunting task, but one Liao and his team are excited about.  

“One big component of Dell’s ESG work is bridging the digital divide,” Liao says. “For us, it means not only working with companies in our supply chain to adapt to changes in the way our industry operates but also supporting programs such as Teach for Taiwan, where we supply computers and other equipment to students in rural areas.” While Teach for Taiwan has been successfully running for 10 years, the MOEA program is expected to launch in late 2023. Through the program, a large company is paired with several smaller ones in a symbiotic relationship that will encourage innovation and energy transformation up and down the supply chain.   

Innovation is part of the Dell story. Liao credits founder and chairman Michael Dell for envisioning many of the company’s moonshot goals. In 2004, Dell was the first computer brand to set product recycling goals, and the company now manufactures laptops with the highest percentage of recycled or reused components at a staggering 80%.  

“Michael is very good at articulating a vision and working with all of us across the company to reach that vision,” says Liao.  

It helps that Liao has a team of dedicated, talented coworkers in Taiwan. Out of the 2,000 employees at Dell Taiwan, 1,500 engineers work at the Taiwan Design Center on everything from laptops to cloud and storage solutions. They tackle challenges that customers – both individuals and public and private sector clients – report to the company.  

“At Dell, we do everything, including the servers and machines the Internet relies on,” says Emily Yang, government affairs lead for Taiwan. “We’re not just a PC or laptop company – we take responsibility for the systems that enable our products, too.”    

As the company celebrates 35 years in Taiwan, the team looks forward to working with partners and government on the next set of opportunities and challenges. For Dell, the next moonshot can’t come soon enough.