Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (HarperBusiness), a new book by HBS professor Richard S. Tedlow, presents fascinating biographical essays of seven men whose products and practices have revolutionized the business world from the Civil War to today. "This is a book about what Americans do best — founding and building new businesses," writes Tedlow, the MBA Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration. "It is about men who broke old rules and made new ones, who built new worlds, who were determined to govern and not be governed, and who exploited tools and techniques of which their contemporaries were only vaguely aware to serve markets which, in some instances, they had to create."

In a recent interview, Tedlow described Giants of Enterprise as a labor of love. "I have been working on this book for a very long time," he noted. "It encapsulates what I have learned about American business history during three decades of research and teaching the subject." Highlights from the conversation follow.

How did you choose the seven men profiled in your book?

First of all, I wanted to move chronologically through time, beginning with the mid-19th century. I selected individuals from different parts of the country who became true titans through the relentless pursuit of a vision or mission. My subjects either were inventors themselves or had leveraged technology in a new way.

The book begins with Andrew Carnegie, born in 1835, a Scottish immigrant who shrewdly spotted an opportunity in the nascent steel industry and became one of the richest men in his adopted country. Carnegie's era also saw an unprecedented explosion of branded consumer goods, among them Ivory Soap, Coca-Cola, and Campbell Soup. My second subject, George Eastman, was in the forefront of this movement, "democratizing" photography with the one-dollar Kodak Brownie camera in 1900. Next I chose Henry Ford, who not only put America on wheels with the Model T, but altered the business world with the Ford Motor Company's production methods.

Moving further into the 20th century, I decided on an industrial marketer and a consumer marketer who epitomized the "American Century." Each in his own way was a pioneer in the art of salesmanship: Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who created International Business Machines (IBM), and Charles Revson, who used television and sponsorship of The $64,000 Question to revolutionize advertising.

In the latter half of the century, Sam Walton, conceivably the greatest retailer in American history as the founder of Wal-Mart, was my choice for a consumer marketer; for an industrial marketer, I selected Robert N. Noyce, inventor of the silicon integrated circuit for which Silicon Valley is named and cofounder of Intel.

Did you uncover similarities among these businessmen that may have foretold their future success?

Although "foretelling" is hard, it is intriguing that if you had met any of these men as teenagers, future success would not have been easy to predict. Henry Ford, for example, started two companies that failed before he established the Ford Motor Company in 1903. He was 40 years old at the time. Watson was also 40 when he went to CTR in 1914; that company didn't become IBM until 1926, and didn't look like a successful firm until the 1930s. Revson wouldn't have stood out as someone who was bound for success. Noyce, however, showed extraordinary intelligence at an early age, and Walton had a natural ability to motivate.

Each of these people faced a pivotal choice or choices in his career, and each made the right decision and followed it through. It was not so much because of their genius but because of their remarkable self-confidence that they succeeded. They seemed incapable of prolonged discouragement. Something they all had in common was that they didn't ruminate about failure. They all made mistakes, but they didn't eat themselves up about it — they just worked harder.

How do the experiences of these men translate into useful lessons for today's business leaders?

There are some lessons that can be learned, and some that can't. I don't want to say that every guy in this book was a genius; the word is overused. But in some corner of the lives of each of these people, there was a streak of lightning that could be called genius. Only a few managers will experience anything similar in their own careers, but understanding the lives of great leaders makes it easier to recognize insights that have the potential to transform a company or industry and to invest in the people who really do epitomize breakthrough thinking.

If a second volume of Giants of Enterprise were to be written in fifty years, would there be more diversity among the subjects?

Yes, certainly. Slowly, economic opportunity is becoming open to a wider range of American citizens than was the case a half-century ago. A future volume would certainly include today's "stars," who are not white men only. Oprah Winfrey comes to mind. Hers is a rags-to-riches story, not only to great wealth but enormous power. She has invented herself, which is a very American thing to do. Bruce Llewellyn, an African-American entrepreneur of outstanding talent, also comes to mind.

As a historian, my only advantage over other scholars in other disciplines is perspective. I have to wait until someone is no longer living before I can analyze their achievements. One needs time and distance to evaluate the true impact of a business titan.

— Nancy O. Perry

Post a Comment