Entrepreneurship – Page 100 – artdiamondblog.com

“The Adventurous, Pioneering Spirit”

Source of book image: http://www.jetagebook.com/

(p. 30) “Jet Age” is ostensibly about the race between two companies and nations to commercialize a military technology and define a new era of air travel. There’s Boeing with its back to the wall and its military contracts drying up, betting everything on passenger jets, pitted against de Havilland and the government-subsidized project meant to reclaim some of Britain’s lost glory. . . .
. . .
But the book is really about the risk-taking essential for making any extreme endeavor commonplace. “Jet Age” celebrates the managers, pilots, engineers, flight attendants and, yes, even passengers (for without passengers there is no business) who gambled everything so that we might cross oceans and continents in hours rather than days.
It is easy to forget, in this time of overcrowded flights, demoralizing security checks, embattled flight attendants and dwindling service, that risk was once embraced as a necessary, even desirable, part of flying. Quoted in the book, the celebrated aviator Lord Brabazon summed it up in post-accident testimony: “You know, and I know, the cause of this accident. It is due to the adventurous, pioneering spirit of our race. It has been like that in the past, it is like that in the present, and I hope it will be in the future.”

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL BELFIORE. “Fatal Flaws.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., February 6, 2011): 30.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 4, 2011.)

The book under review is:
Verhovek, Sam Howe. Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World. New York: Avery, 2010.

Roy E. Disney as a “Real-life Jiminy Cricket”

“Roy E. Disney, shown in 1996, was considered a tough and outspoken critic of top executives at the Walt Disney Company.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B18) LOS ANGELES — Roy E. Disney, who helped revitalize the famed animation division of the company founded by his uncle, Walt Disney, and who at times publicly feuded with top Disney executives, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 79.

His death, at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, was caused by stomach cancer, a spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Company said. Mr. Disney, who had homes in Newport Beach and the Toluca Lake district of Los Angeles, was the last member of the Disney family to work at the entertainment conglomerate built by his uncle and his father, Roy O. Disney.
As a boy the younger Roy would play in the halls of his uncle’s studio, where animators often used him as a test audience as they toiled on movies like “Pinocchio.” As an adult he helped bring the animation studio back from the brink, overseeing a creative renaissance that led to “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”
But the soft-spoken Mr. Disney was primarily known for a willingness to question the company’s top managers, aggressively and publicly, when he felt they were mishandling the family empire. Some people in the company referred to him as its real-life Jiminy Cricket: a living conscience who was at times intensely disliked by management for speaking out.
. . .
Returning to the company in 1984, Mr. Disney set about revitalizing the floundering animation division. He obtained financing, for instance, for a computerized postproduction facility, helping to make possible the revolving ballroom scene in “Beauty and the Beast.”

For the full obituary, see:
BROOKS BARNES. “Roy E. Disney Dies at 79; Rejuvenated Animation.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 17, 2009): B18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“The Information in a Message Is Inversely Proportional to Its Probability”

Source of book image: http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/

(p. A13) What, exactly, is information? Prior to Shannon, Mr. Gleick notes, the term seemed as hopelessly subjective as “beauty” or “truth.” But in 1948 Shannon, then working for Bell Laboratories, gave information an almost magically precise, quantitative definition: The information in a message is inversely proportional to its probability. Random “noise” is quite uniform; the more surprising a message, the more information it contains. Shannon reduced information to a basic unit called a “bit,” short for binary digit. A bit is a message that represents one of two choices: yes or no, heads or tails, one or zero.

For the full review, see:

JOHN HORGAN. “Little Bits Go a Long Way; The more surprising a message, the more information it contains.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 1, 2011): A13.

Book being reviewed:
Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.

Better Rails Were Needed Before Train Would “Work”

(p. 300) The other weight problem was the one that licked Trevithick at Penydarren: The tracks on which the locomotive ran were just not able to survive the tonnage traveling over them. Driving a five-ton steam locomotive over rails designed for horse-drawn carts was only slightly more sensible than driving a school bus over a bridge made of wet ice cubes. In both cases, it’s a close call whether the vehicle will skid before or after the surface collapses.

. . .
(p. 301) Two years later, Stephenson, in collaboration with the ironmonger William Losh of Newcastle, produced, and in September 1816 jointly patented, a series of’ improvements in wheels, suspension, and–most important–the method by which the rails and “chairs” connected one piece of track to another. Stephenson’s rails seem mundane next to better-known eureka moments, but as much as any other innovation of the day they underline the importance of such micro-inventions in the making of a revolution. For it was the rails that finally made the entire network of devices–engine, linkage, wheel, and track–work.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

How Bacardi Fought Predatory Taxation in Pre-Castro Cuba

Source of book image: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21shelf.html?_r=1

(p. W6) When it comes to chronicling the Bacardi rum dynasty, the best model may be “Buddenbrooks” or some other novelistic attempt to capture the experience of a family business trying to survive across generations. Tom Gjelten’s “Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba” — though fact-driven history and far more upbeat that Thomas Mann’s tale of dynastic decline — feels very much in this literary tradition.
. . .
Perhaps the most fascinating figure in the Bacardi tale is José Bosch, called Pepín, a young businessman who also married into the Bacardi family and was an early opponent of Gerardo Machado’s corrupt rule in the 1920s. Machado made Bacardi, one of Cuba’s most successful companies, a target of predatory taxation, but a proposed rum tax was more than the distiller could stand. Bacardi opened new facilities in Mexico and threatened to move its operations there if the tax was enacted. The Cuban legislature dropped the idea — and Bacardi soon found itself with a Mexican distillery it didn’t need, trying to sell a liquor to tequila- quaffing public that didn’t want it.
Bosch was dispatched in 1933 to shut down the Mexican facility, but instead he saved it. “Noticing that Mexicans drank a lot of Coca-Cola,” Mr. Gjelten writes, Bosch urged the company to promote Bacardi-and-Coke cocktails. Observing the rich tradition of Mexican handicrafts, he also suggested that the locals would be more inclined to drink rum if it was sold in the sort of wicker-covered jugs often used for it in Cuba. Sales in 1934 doubled.

For the full review, see:
ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA. “The Family Spirit.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., September 12, 2008): W6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The book being reviewed, is:
Gjelten, Tom. Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause. New York: Viking Penguin, 2008.

Luther Burbank’s Income Suffered Because His Inventions Could Not Be Patented

“Luther Burbank pollinating poppies in Santa Rosa, Calif.” Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. C4) There is a particular type of potato at the heart of Jane S. Smith’s book about Luther Burbank, a man who described himself as an “evoluter of new plants.” Ms. Smith nicknames that potato “the lucky spud.” That turn of phrase is one of many reasons to appreciate “The Garden of Invention,” her colorful, far-reaching book about the genetic, agricultural, economic and legal issues raised by Burbank’s life and legend.
. . .
This book takes more than a passing interest in Burbank’s income, insofar as it reflected his legal ability to protect his scientific advances. In his early professional years he grappled with the doctrine that held that while a gold mine was real property and a machine to extract gold was intellectual property, the actual mineral belonged to anyone who could find it; ditto with potatoes. Throughout his career, even as he developed friendships with tycoons like Ford and Thomas Edison, Burbank lived under constant financial pressure to keep creating new plant products. “His income was entirely dependent on his latest marvel,” Ms. Smith writes

For the full review, see:
JANET MASLIN. “Books of The Times; The Curious Man Lucky Enough to Create ‘the Lucky Spud’.” The New York Times (Mon., May 4, 2009): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated May 3, 2009.)

The book being reviewed, is:
Smith, Jane S. The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants. New York: The Penguin Press, 2009.

The Story of Spielberg’s “World-Changing Movies” Deserves “a Detailed, Impassioned and Insightful Telling”

(p. 20) . . . , LaPorte combines tabloid celebrity worship with an older oddity: the incongruous fact that a free market also produces resentment, especially when a competitor like Spielberg demonstrates leadership, superior achievement and undeniable success. He’s one of the few filmmakers still committed to exploring the human condition — and in popular terms. This is what sets him apart and makes him admired, envied and even inscrutable to those who think only in craven terms of business and royalty.

. . .
So it’s a tabloid book. We can only hope it doesn’t become the historical record. LaPorte undermines her research with a headachy repetition of anonymous informants (“one insider,” “one former executive,” “one source”). She concludes that “inherent in all of it was hubris.” But a story this significant, about world-changing movies, doesn’t need homilies. It needs a detailed, impassioned and insightful telling, one that would help us better appreciate a frequently misunderstood, underinterpreted pop artist whose work connects with the public, defines the complexities of human experience and dwarfs most of contemporary Hollywood’s output. DreamWorks calls for a sensitive sociologist — a Tom Wolfe or a Norman Mailer or a Pauline Kael — who can discern the deep, divided heart of Hollywood.

For the full review, see:
ARMOND WHITE. “The Big Picture.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., July 11, 2010): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated July 9, 2010.)

The book White credibly pans is:
LaPorte, Nicole. The Men Who Would Be King; an Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called Dreamworks. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Bloggers See Bad Conditions for Entrepreneurs

The chart above and the one below are from the recently-released results of the First Quarter 2011 influential blogger survey conducted by the Kauffman Foundation. (Tim Kane gave permission to put the charts on my blog.) artdiamondblog.com is one of the blogs included in the survey.

The results above show a perception that conditions are currently tough for entrepreneurs. The chart below displays one of the main reasons: the current economy is perceived as uncertain and fragile. There are many reasons for the uncertainty, but one of them is surely that the bloggers have doubts about the depth of support in government for the institutions and policies upon which entrepreneurship depends (like private property, restrained regulations, and low taxes).

For a full PDF report on the 2011 Q1 survey results, see:
http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/econ_blogger_outlook_q1_2011.pdf

Salesforce.com Needed More than New Economy Cockiness to Succeed

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A25) Mr. Benioff tells the story of his success in “Behind the Cloud,” a triumphalist memoir and business self-help manual. He makes it clear that, when he was starting out, he followed the standard dot-com playbook: Get some high-profile tech-industry backers and mentors–Mr. Benioff’s former boss, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, was one–create buzz and let the revenues flow in. Salesforce.com might have been launched with New Economy cockiness, but success followed for solid, old-fashioned reasons: The company’s products filled a market gap.

For the full review, see:

JESSICA HODGSON. “Selling and Software; How a start-up found a new way to deliver computer products to salespeople.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., DECEMBER 17, 2009): A25.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated DECEMBER 16, 2009.)

The book being reviewed, is:
Benioff, Marc. Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.Com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Mackey Reduced Role in Whole Foods after Being “Drained” by Antitrust Battle

“Higher existing-store sales powered Whole Foods earnings. Above, co-founder John Mackey juggles apples in a New York store last November.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B6) Whole Foods Market Inc. reported Wednesday that fiscal second-quarter profits had more than doubled and raised its full-year earnings forecast. The company also shook up its management team, naming a co-chief executive, though current CEO and co-founder John Mackey said he expects to work “for another decade or so.”
. . .
Mr. Mackey in December resigned as Whole Foods’ chairman after a year of controversy. Last summer, he wrote a controversial opinion article for The Wall Street Journal on his views of health care reform that led to boycotts of the natural grocer by some of his most loyal shoppers. Last spring, the Fair Trade Commission ordered the sale of 37 former Wild Oats Markets Inc. stores, a multi-year battle that Mr. Mackey says left him drained and influenced his decision to appoint Mr. Robb as co-CEO.

For the full story, see:
TIMOTHY W. MARTIN. “Profit Soars at Whole Foods; Grocery Chain Forecasts Sharply Higher Profit, Promotes Two Veteran Executives.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., MAY 13, 2010): B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the first paragraph quoted above has slightly different wording in the online version than the print version; the second paragraph quoted is the same in both.)