文档介绍：Business English
Through Cases
A Course Specially Designed for MBA candidates at School of Business, Soochow University
By Dr. Xu Jian (jack_******@)
March 2, 2005
1. Foundations and challenges of business
Facing Business Challenges at Gateway 2000
From Farm Boy to Billionaire
Computers. The odds are slim you will survive, much less thrive, in this industry. You have to guess what customers will want more than a year in advance, even though technology is changing at an incredibly fast pace. It’s hardly a business for cowboys—unless you’re Ted Waitt.
Son of a fourth-generation cattle broker, Waitt (currently 34 and worth an estimated $ billion) rides herd over Gateway 2000. They tell stories about Waitt, and not just in Sioux City, South Dakota—Gateway’s homeland. They talk about how he built a fortune by trusting his instincts and making gutsy calls that led the industry. How he borrowed $10,000 from his grandmother to start a mail-order computer business, and how he turned a two-man, farmhouse operation into a global giant—in only ten years. And they talk about the pony-tailed farm boy clad in deck shoes and a polo shirt who knew that someday he was going to run his own company.
It all began while Waitt was working for a local computer store; he was amazed by how easy it was to sell computer equipment to acknowledgeable computer users over the phone. So in 1985 Waitt (the marketer) teamed up with his buddy Mike Hammond (the technical whiz), and the two started a small mail-order computer business of their own. Waitt and Hammond worked long hours—from their upstairs office in Waitt’s family farmhouse.
Their big break came in 1987, when Texas Instruments (TI) decided to stop manufacturing its own computers and instead sell only industry-standard IBM-compatible personal computers (PCs). Of course, owners of TI computers could trade in their equipment for newer IBM-compatible computers, but first they would have to cough