Famous Entrepreneurs
Common Qualities
of
Famous Entrepreneurs of
American origin
The Entrepreneurial Mindset
Famous
entrepreneurs are
generally recognized as a man or a woman who comes up with an
innovative idea
to start a new business and “actually implement the business idea”.
An entrepreneur
becomes
famous when the new business paves the path for the economic
development of a
region, and even an entire country.
It is important
to realize
that the fame of an entrepreneur does not rely only on the amount of
wealth he
or she has amassed. It relies equally on the visionary power and the
creative
talent of the entrepreneur.
Has he or she
been able to
transform the way business is conducted?
Has she or been
able to introduce a
new product or a new idea?
How profound is
the impact of the new idea or
product on the lives of the people?
Many people
like to believe
that the United States owes a great deal of its success to its
entrepreneurship
culture. The nation
that is America was
built by pioneers and risk-takers.
World renowned inventors like
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, famous entrepreneurs such as
Andrew
Carnegie and Henry Ford populate the pages of its history books.
Statistics
show that an average of 550,000 small businesses was created every
month in the
United States between 1996 and 2004.
Wal-Mart, the
world’s largest company was created in 1962, and multi-million
dollar companies like Google and Facebook came into existence hardly a
decade
ago.
The
list of famous entrepreneurs of American origin is endless,
but here are a few:
John D.
Rockefeller and Henry Flagler
started the Standard Oil
Company in 1870 to
transform the then chaotic oil industry with their visionary plans,
their
persuasive skills and their diligence. Today, the Standard Oil Company
is known
as Exxon Mobil, and it is one of the toppers in the list of Fortune 500
companies.
Frederick W.
Smith
built the Federal
Express, number 70 on the
2006 Fortune 500 list, the company
that pioneered the express air courier industry by specializing
in the overnight delivery of high priority packages and documents.
Caleb D. Bradham
started selling the beverage Pepsi-Cola in his pharmacy in
1898 with the idea of attracting more customers with a refreshing new
cold
drink. From this
humble
beginning, the fame of Pepsi-Cola has now spread all
across the world, and Pepsico,
Inc. was at number 61 on the 2006 Fortune 100 List.
George Mecherle,
one of the most famous
American entrepreneurs
in
the insurance
industry, and the brains behind State Farm
Insurance, came up with
the innovative idea of basing insurance rates on risk level.
William Henry Gates III,the
co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, the world’s
largest software company, is perhaps one of the most popular
entrepreneurs of
our time. Gate had the ability to predict the evolving importance of
the
personal computer and the ingenuity to do something about it.
Sam
Walton came up with
the concept of Wal-Mart in order to fulfill the perceived need for a
large
retail store that would provide consumers with a wide variety of
products at
the lowest prices along with unparalleled and customer service
excellence.
Today the Wal-Mart chain owns the largest number of stores in the world.
Whatever era they were born and irrespective of their fields most American entrepreneurs exhibit certain common
characteristics.
Entrepreneurial
Qualities
The common
qualities of American entrepreneurs can be summarized as follows:
- having a vision
and certainty that if they push on success will come
- willingness to
take risks
- strong
leadership qualities
- self-confident
and a self-starter
- The
ability to withstand mental and economic hardship
- The
capacity to ignore negative, nonconstructive feedback and press-on
A
study of the lives
of famous entrepreneurs is useful because it can lead us closer to
understanding the entrepreneurial mindset.
From
Famous
Entrepreneurs to
How To Start A Small
Business
