Mark Davison at Dell EMC World in Las Vegas – If he hadn’t started tinkering with computers while at college, things could have worked out very differently for Michael Dell – a totally different vocation, for instance.
It’s one of those questions everyone wants to ask, but no-one ever does. At a Press Q&A here at Dell EMC World one emboldened journalist eventually posed the question to the Dell Technologies chairman and CEO many of us have held back on: If you hadn’t got involved in technology, what would you have done?
“I’m not really sure,” Dell replied. “I suppose I would have been a doctor. My mother and father – and brother – are all doctors … even my father-in-law is a doctor. So I’m kind of the black sheep of the family.
“I probably would have been a doctor somewhere,” he says.
“But it’s interesting seeing the incredible things in medicine because of technology … genetic sequencing, for example. I think, looking forward to the future of medicine, that some incredible advances will be driven by technology.
“I’m not a doctor,” Dell adds, “but I make a lot of cool stuff that empowers doctors out there. That’s really satisfying.”