Whether titans of industry, influential business leaders, or creators of history's most recognizable brands, these entrepreneurs had the vision, innovation, and ruthless determination to make their marks on our society in indelible ways. Boldly illustrated and comprehensive in its scope and depth, Entrepreneurs Who Changed History profiles more than 90 industry leaders across the world and throughout the ages - from the enterprising bankers of the medieval world and the merchants of an empire to the titans of industry and the geniuses of Silicon Valley. Combining accessible text with specially-commissioned illustrated portraits in a range of bold artwork styles, photographs, and infographics, entries showcase each individual in a fresh, visual way. The towering personalities behind some of history's most recognizable brands and companies - their ruthlessness, tenacity, creativity, and sheer grit - are all brought to vivid life. Profiling the kings and queens of commerce and trade, Entrepreneurs Who Changed History features the familiar faces of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, Ford and Ferrari, Gates and Zuckerberg, alongside lesser-known figures such as the enterprising women of colonial America, the emancipated enslaved people who became millionaires against all odds, and the individuals powering today's emerging economies.
A Brief History of Entrepreneurship charts how the pursuit of profit by private individuals has been a prime mover in revolutionizing civilization. Entrepreneurs often butt up against processes, technologies, social conventions, and even laws. So they circumvent, innovate, and violate to obtain what they want. This creative destruction has brought about overland and overseas trade, colonization, and a host of revolutionary technologies—from caffeinated beverages to the personal computer—that have transformed society. Consulting rich archival sources, including some that have never before been translated, Carlen maps the course of human history through nine episodes when entrepreneurship reshaped our world. Highlighting the most colorful characters of each era, he discusses Mesopotamian merchants' creation of the urban market economy; Phoenician merchant-sailors intercontinental trade, which came to connect Africa, Asia, and Europe; Chinese tea traders' invention of paper money; the colonization of the Americas; and the current "flattening" of the world's economic playing field. Yet the pursuit of profit hasn't always moved us forward. From slavery to organized crime, Carlen explores how entrepreneurship can sometimes work at the expense of others. He also discusses the new entrepreneurs who, through the nascent space tourism industry, are leading humanity to a multiplanetary future. By exploring all sides of this legacy, Carlen brings much-needed detail to the role of entrepreneurship in revolutionizing civilization.
A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovation Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs—and their innovations—have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.
Covering the period c.1200-c.2000, this book provides an innovative investigation of entrepreneurship in a long-run historical perspective, presenting new insights into the personal characteristics of successful business people and deepening our understanding of the roots of industrialization and economic growth.
Weaving together vivid narrative with economic analysis, "American Entrepreneur" vividly illustrates the history of business in the United States from the point of view of the enterprising men and women who made it happen.
The United States was conceived in business, founded on business, and operated as a business -- all because of the entrepreneurial mind of the greatest American businessman of any generation: George Washington. Using Washington's extensive but often overlooked financial papers, Edward G. Lengel chronicles the fascinating and inspiring story of how this self-educated man built the Mount Vernon estate into a vast multilayered enterprise and prudently managed meager resources to win the war of independence. Later, as president, he helped establish the national economy on a solid footing and favorably positioned the nation for the Industrial Revolution. Washington's steadfast commitment to the core economic principles of probity, transparency, careful management, and calculated boldness are timeless lessons that should inspire and instruct investors even today. First Entrepreneur will transform how ordinary Americans think about George Washington and how his success in commercial enterprise influenced and guided the emerging nation.
In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.
This book establishes a chronological trace of the entrepreneur as treated in economic literature in order to give a more wholesome perspective to contemporary writings and teachings on entrepreneurship. It focuses on the nature and role of the entrepreneur, and of entrepreneurship, as revealed in economic literature as early as the eighteenth century, when Richard Cantillon first coined the term 'entrepreneur'. The authors then trace how Joseph Schumpeter's perspective, among other’s, on entrepreneurship came to dominate the world's understanding of the term. Due to Schumpeter’s dominant influence, entrepreneurship has come to occupy a primary role in the theory of economic development. In this book Hébert and Link discuss various key topics including the German Tradition, the Austrian and the English School of thought as well as individuals such as Alfred Marshall and Jeremy Bentham. The historical survey also illustrates the tension that often exists between "theory" and "practice" and how it has been difficult for economic theory to assimilate a core concept that plays a vital role in social and economic change. Finally, the book exposes the many different facets of entrepreneurship as they have been perceived by some of the great economists throughout the ages.
This book is a story of a great adventure arising from a business where adventures could be least expected. Although it’s hero, the late Tomas Bata, kept his eyes focused sharply on the ground (in the shoe business-he has to) his mind was soaring high in dreams of a mission to make all mankind well shod. How he did it and what his motives and accomplishments were is presented in this biography of the man and his time with considerable detail and first hand knowledge. We see a man, who having run away from home at the age of fourteen to start his own business, was continuously impatient with both time and environment visualizing the opportunities which, although at hand, were never noticed by his competitors during his life. He was man who could visualize such opportunities even in the most difficult situations as indicated from his attitude toward the Great Depression of 1929: “Half of mankind is barefoot and only a fraction of the world’s population is well shod,” he said at the time of world-wide unemployment. “Look how little we’ve done so far and how much work is waiting for all shoemakers every-where in the world.” And when the difficulties continued, he growled into their faces in 1930: “I would rather work for nothing than do nothing. Only when you work, can you keep hoping to find a way.” Shoemaker, salesman and organizer of many industries, Tomas Bata was a man among men, changing the simple folk in and around his birthplace into modern industrial workers and managers of business and salesmen resembling a now almost extinct type of man who, in their pursuance of their business, have discovered in former centuries new territories and lifted up the standard of life and living everywhere. Necessity made him a politician to obtain the right to rebuild a whole city, a teacher pioneering new methods of education, a builder who combined building of factories and houses with a businessman type of social service. However, he was first and always an entrepreneur extraordinary. As such, he attacked every problem with gusto of a prize fighter, and the zeal of a missionary, transferring an ideal into ideas--and these again into plans and actions. Ideal? What ideal and ideas? Some of them can be discerned from the pages of this book, others in the fierce loyalty and performance o f the men whom he brought up to spread his message of entrepreneurship to the four corners of the world. In some ways, and perhaps indirectly, a reader could take this book as a challenge. If its hero succeeded in turning a simple business into a real adventure of service and a powerful way of life, why not you? Today’s world needs men of Tomas Bata’s caliber as much as his world needed them several decades ago, and perhaps nowadays even more. It is this type of man who provides the answers to the crucial questions of our time, i.e., whether our society, enjoying the good things of life, will survive as a home of free men. This, in the author’s concept, is a final message arising from the biography of this extraordinary man, Tomas Bata: “He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew.”
Explore the lives of more than 85 of the world's most transformational and influential leaders in politics, business, religion, humanitarianism, and the military with this innovative and boldly graphic book. Comprehensive in its scope and depth, and fully illustrated, Leaders Who Changed History profiles leaders from inspirational to insidious, those who changed the world for the better and those whose corruption left enduring scars. These figures hail from all walks of life - including political, military, religious, and business. Combining accessible text with specially commissioned illustrated portraits in a range of bold styles, photographs, infographics, and timelines, entries explore the lives and legacies of each individual in a fresh, visual way. Covering political masterminds and military geniuses such as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, great kings and queens like Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great, icons of religion and rebellion from Mohammad to the Dalai Lama to Mahatma Ghandi, and captains of industry, Leaders Who Changed History explores and explains the world-changing actions of history's heroes and villains.
