Such limited customisation encourages a build-to-order model, without the need for a supply chain drowned by a huge number of parts.

ECONOMIST: Face value

However, such a model has placed tremendous stress on the supply chain and left companies with greater exposure to a range of unforeseen, disruptive risks.

FORBES: Ash In The Supply Chain

As a business model, there is a lot of inefficiency built into the supply chain and replenishment process for these street vendors, since they reside a few notches down in the distribution system from the regular brick and mortar merchants with whom they compete.

FORBES: Creating Entrepreneurs at the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid

The company can manage its profit margins by raising prices on select items and by using a more flexible inventory and supply chain model to respond to cost pressures and new opportunities as they arise.

FORBES: Nike's Swoosh Into Emerging Markets Blunts Impact Of Higher Costs

That Europe hasn't realized the same type of productivity gains is partly a result of its reluctance to embrace the big-box retail model, one that allows a company to take full advantage of the world supply chain to obtain and sell goods cheaply.

FORBES: Wal-Mart Nation

This may be the crucial test for Mr Dell who, after all, gave his name not just to the firm but to a whole business model (just-in-time, made-to-order manufacturing using an outsourced supply chain), key elements of which have since been adopted by his competitors.

ECONOMIST: Second-act chief executives