#links

#links

History's 10 greatest entrepreneurs

By Philipp Harper

 

              

Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs

.. 

..How many entrepreneurs have there been in the history of the world? Millions, certainly, probably even billions. These are the men and women who take capital -- their own or somebody else’s -- and use it to beget more capital. Some fail, some succeed, some excel.

With so many candidates to choose from, any list of the 10 greatest entrepreneurs of all time will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. It will also be top-heavy with Americans, just as a list of great chefs would be disproportionately French or of great eccentrics dominated by the British.

Business is what America does. If that sounds chauvinistic, get over it.

Here, without further ado but with tongue occasionally in cheek, are history’s 10 greatest entrepreneurs.

1.  King Croesus. A pick by our veterans committee, Croesus, who ruled the Asia Minor kingdom of Lydia in the sixth century B.C., is owed a huge debt of gratitude for minting the world’s first coinage, thereby creating in a single stroke the lifeblood of every business: liquidity and cash flow. Moreover, his opulent lifestyle has given entrepreneurs throughout history something to shoot for. Is there a greater distinction for the commercially inclined than to be deemed “as rich as Croesus”?

2.  Pope Sixtus IV.  Sixtus gets the nod for realizing that the “wages of sin” meant more than unpleasant repercussions. There was money to be made in damnation, and Sixtus mined it by opening up a new market -- the dead -- for the indulgences the church had been selling for years. Relatives of the deceased quickly filled the Vatican’s coffers with payments intended to lessen the time their loved ones spent in purgatory. In 1478 Sixtus “grew his market” by authorizing the Spanish Inquisition, which swelled purgatory’s ranks by 100,000 souls in 15 years. He also was the first pope to license brothels.

3.  Benjamin Franklin. In a real sense, Franklin was America’s first entrepreneur. Unlike other of the Founding Fathers -- the hypermoral Washington, the prodigiously intellectual Jefferson -- whose virtues and attainments are seen today as anachronisms, Franklin truly was a model of what many of us would become. Beneath the statesman’s mantle resided a popular author, a printer, an inventor (the lightning rod, bifocals) and a very savvy businessman who knew how to commercialize the fruits of his fertile mind.

4.  P.T. Barnum. Americans have always loved a good scam and Phineas Taylor Barnum took the art to new heights. He played on our fascination with the bizarre and freakish with sideshow acts ranging from the midget Tom Thumb to Jumbo the giant elephant. In between was a host of more dubious curiosities. He created the Barnum and Bailey Circus as a showcase for all this wonderment, and dubbed it “the Greatest Show on Earth.” Along the way he invented modern advertising and became rich. For the record, he never said “There’s a sucker born every five minutes,” but he left behind plenty of other bon mots. Among them: “Every crowd has a silver lining.”

5.  Thomas Edison. What do you say about the man who gave the world the electric light, the phonograph, talking motion pictures and more than 1,300 other patented inventions? That he was the world’s greatest inventor, certainly.  But he was also able to exploit the profit potential in his creations, an entrepreneurial bent that asserted itself when Edison was a teen-ager, printing a newspaper in the baggage car of a rolling train and then selling copies to passengers. His impact on the way people live was and is pervasive. As a combination of inventive genius and entrepreneurial flair, he stands alone.

6.  Henry Ford. Ford also fundamentally changed human lifestyles by making available a vehicle, the Model T, that vastly extended people’s range of movement. The automobile would allow America’s masses to fulfill their Manifest Destiny to populate every corner of the continent. But his more profound impact was on industry. The moving assembly line he designed to build his cars was the signal breakthrough of the Industrial Age. Appropriately, Ford earned the seed capital for his enterprise by working as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit.

7.  Benjamin Siegel. Known as “Bugsy” to his friends,Siegel was a notorious mobster with a touch of the visionary. Legend has it that he single-handedly invented Las Vegas, and that’s a stretch. But he was the first to see what the town could become: a lush oasis of pleasure where gambling was just one of the attractions. He also proved adept at attracting other people’s money to build his iconic resort, The Flamingo. Trouble was, some of those other people belonged to an outfit called Murder Inc., and Siegel was gunned down in 1947 amid rumors he had stolen from his partners. But give the devil his due: Before there was the Bellagio, there was Bugsy.

8.  Ray Kroc. Nothing says entrepreneur like persistence, and nothings says persistence like Ray Kroc, the kitchen wares salesman who in 1954, at age 52 and in poor health, had his imagination hijacked by a family-run restaurant in the desert outside Los Angeles. Once he had bought out the McDonald brothers, Kroc proceeded to take their concept of a limited menu, fast service and low prices and expand it nationally, in the process creating the fast-food industry and dramatically affecting America’s lifestyle and, sadly, collective health.

9.  H. Ross Perot. Within every entrepreneur lurks a touch of the cowboy, and there’s no better example of the strain than Perot, the diminutive Texan who has become best known in recent years as a political gadfly. Before that, though, he was all business, using a $1,000 loan from his wife in 1962 to launch Electronic Data Systems. Perot’s winning idea was that large corporations and organizations needed data-processing help if they were to take full advantage of computer technology. When in the mid-’60s he won contracts with  two new federal health-care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- EDS was off and running and Perot was on his way to being one of America’s richest citizens.

10.  Jobs & Wozniak. Apple Computer’s two Steves weren’t the first Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to launch a billion-dollar business from a Palo Alto garage -- Hewlett and Packard were there before them -- but they were the first to democratize computing by creating a machine whose use was so wonderfully intuitive that even technophobes embraced it. Combine the elegance of Wozniak’s operating system design with Jobs’ marketing savvy (remember Apple’s “1984” ad?) and the result was a true phenomenon. Yes, the Apple was eclipsed by the PC, but only after Microsoft (behind the vision of two other notable entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and Paul Allen) developed Windows to ape its rival’s ease of use.

Philipp Harper is a freelance journalist living in south Georgia.

Won 1st prize in biz competition........Organized by i create.US based organization

HEYYYYY....... WE WON 1ST PRIZE IN BUSINESS PRESSENTATION COMPETITION...CONDUCTED BY I-CREATE INDIA....US base organization........now lets go to delhi for national level business competition.....thank to all team members trainers,prof and friends.....feeling really good

 

Forbes India Magazine - Kishore Biyani: The Never-say-die Retailer

Forbes India Magazine - Kishore Biyani: The Never-say-die Retailer

Few advice for Achieving your personal GOALS..............

One of the most important tasks in a person's life is goal setting, because this is the mechanism that every person uses to take themselves from where they are today to where they would like to be. The problem is, many times when we set an important goal for ourselves we end up falling through and not reaching our final objective. This article will give a few very powerful pieces of advice that will greatly increase the probability of accomplishing your goals that you set for yourself, starting with changing the words and language that you are using to define your goal.

An incredibly effective and simple technique that you can use to greatly increase the chances of fulfilling the goals that you set for yourself is to change the words that you use when you state the goal to yourself, so that you are using the word "promise" instead of the word "goal." If you tell yourself that you have a certain goal that you want to meet, this type of language is not nearly as powerful as saying "I promise myself" that I will accomplish a certain achievement. Most people have a much better track record with promises than they have with setting goals, so by making this subtle shift in the type of language you are using it can change the way your mind sees the objective and it will get you thinking about all the things you can do to fulfill a promise to yourself.

Another important tip that is crucial to your success is to take out a pen and paper, and write down exactly what the promise is that you are making to yourself. This is important for two reasons:

 First, you are taking an abstract thought and crystallizing it into concrete physical form, which is the first step in making your goal a reality.

 Second, you are becoming absolutely clear about what it is that you want to accomplish, so that there is no longer any ambiguity and the objective is very clearly defined. Writing down your goals is absolutely necessary if you are serious about achieving them, because it is how you start to make them real.

Once your goals are written down on paper, you should be sure that you keep this information personal and do not share it with anyone. You are making a promise and a contract with yourself when you do this, and it allows you to be completely honest with yourself about where you are now and how you want to get where you want to be. Now that you have clearly defined your objective, you should write down as many steps and ideas that you can think of about actions you can take to further achieve your goal and fulfill your promise to yourself.

This will give you a clearly defined path with certain measurable actions you can take, along with short-term objectives that you can accomplish one-by-one to work your way to your long-term objective. By breaking up your larger goal into smaller benchmarks, you make your work easier to understand and less intimidating, which will give you more confidence and a greater sense of fulfillment as you reach each benchmark. By following these simple steps, it will make it much easier for you to achieve any goal in your life that you set for yourself, no matter what it may be.

Salary Negotiations

Salary negotiation is more of an art than a science. It usually is one of the most neglected and under-rated aspects of a Job search. I have heard quite a few people say, "I just want to get my foot in the door, and I don't care about how much they pay me to start with. Once I am in, I can get good raise etc." In my opinion, don't ever make that mistake. It just doesn't work that way. Do not accept a position at a salary lower than you know you are worth with the hopes of big raises in the future. The article below by Lee Miller is the best article I have found on this subject. He has also written a book, "Get More Money on Your Next Job", which is very interesting and an informative read.

 

Principles for Negotiating:

 The Commandments of Employment Negotiations

Taking into consideration those things that make employment negotiations unique, together with generally applicable negotiating principles, I have developed a set of basic principles which I refer to as The Ten Commandments of Employment Negotiations. These principles, along with what I refer to as the Eleventh Commandment, apply in every employment negotiation.

Commandment 1: Be Prepared

Preparation is critical when negotiating the terms of your employment. The more information you have, the more successful you will be. This is so important that I have devoted a full chapter in my book to preparing for employment negotiations. This is the first commandment because it is the most important single thing you can do to ensure that you get the best deal possible.

Commandment 2: Recognize That Employment Negotiations Are Unique

Employment negotiations are different from other types of negotiations. They are not a one-shot deal like buying a house or a car. When the employment negotiations are over, you will have to work with your former "adversary" on a daily basis; more important, your career success may depend on the person with whom you have just finished negotiating. Therefore, even though you want to negotiate the best possible deal, you need to proceed in a way that doesn't tarnish your image.

By the same token, your future boss will want you to feel good about joining the company. Once an employer has decided that you are the person for the job, the primary concern will not be to negotiate the least expensive compensation package the company can get away with. Rather, the main focus will be on getting you to accept the job. As a result, employment negotiations are unusual in that both sides share that same basic goal.

Commandment 3: Understand Your Needs and Those of Your Prospective Employer

Any employment negotiation is going to involve trade-offs. To be successful in this type of negotiation, you need to examine your own priorities. What is it that you want? Are comfortable with a low salary and a large equity stake? Do you feel confident that you can meet the requisite criteria to earn a bonus? Are you able to handle dramatic swings in income from year to year? How important is job security to you?

Understanding your needs will also help you determine what type of company you want to work for. (For example, a family-owned company might offer a larger salary than start-up company, but the same start-up company will offer stock or stock options that a family-owned company typically will not.) Regardless of the type of company you are considering, an employer may not be able to give you exactly what you want. There are numerous institutional constraints on how much a company can pay for a given position or what kinds of benefits it can offer.

Understanding what you want and what a company can do within its own organizational and budgetary constraints will enable you to determine what trade-offs are possible in order to maximize what you get. This knowledge will also enable you to walk away from a job when a company cannot offer the type of compensation package that suits your needs.

Commandment 4: Understand the Dynamics of the Particular Negotiations

Sometimes you will have skills or experience for which there is a great demand. You may be the only qualified candidate to have made it through the interview process, and the company would like to hire someone quickly. Similarly, if you have been able to defer discussing compensation until the company has determined you are the best candidate for the job, your bargaining position will be greatly strengthened. These are enviable positions to be in.

On the other hand, you may in fact be one of several candidates the company is considering, any one of whom it would be happy to hire. Under those circumstances, compensation may be the key factor in determining who gets the job. Sizing up the situation and understanding the relative position of each of the parties to the negotiations will help you determine when to press your advantage and when to back off.

Commandment 5: Never Lie, but Use the Truth to Your Advantage

Honesty is important. If you lie during the negotiations, sooner or later you are likely to be caught. Once you are caught lying, you lose all credibility. Even if you don't lose the job, you will be placed at a tremendous disadvantage, and your future credibility on the job will be undermined.

On the other hand, total candor will not be rewarded. You are not required to answer a specific question directly unless the answer helps your position. You can determine what you want to say and how you want to say it. One element of preparation is to understand those areas which may be problematic so you can rehearse how you will handle them when they come up.

Commandment 6: Understand the Role That Fairness Plays in the Process

The guiding principle for most employers in determining what they will agree to is fairness. Within the constraints of their budget and organization structure, employers will usually agree to anything that is fair and reasonable in order to hire someone they want. Appeals to fairness are the most powerful weapon available in employment negotiations. Sometimes such an appeal may even convince an employer of the need to adjust its salary structure or increase the amount of money budgeted for a position.

You should be able to justify every request in terms of fairness. If the cost of living is higher where you're going, it is only fair to have your salary increased sufficiently to compensate. If comparable executives in similar companies are given one percent of the company's stock, you should be treated no differently. Your prospective employer will want you to accept its offer and to feel that you have been treated fairly. Understanding the importance of fairness as a negotiating principle can make the difference between success and failure.

Commandment 7: Use Uncertainty to Your Advantage

If an employer is not certain what it will take to recruit you , its initial offer is likely to be close to its best offer. If you have divulged too much information, it will likely not offer you as much as it might have otherwise. By not disclosing exactly what your compensation package is or exactly what it would take to get you to leave your current job, you will force a potential employer to give you its best offer.

Commandment 8: Be Creative

You may not be able to get everything you want, but you want to be sure to get everything you can. Focus on the value of the total package. Look for different ways to achieve your objectives. Be willing to make trade-offs to increase the total value of the deal. Limit your "requirements." When you lock yourself into a position, you limit your ability to be creative.

If you are creative, you can package what you want in ways that are acceptable to the company. You will also be able to find creative "trades" that allow you to withdraw requests that might be problematic to the company in return for improvements in areas where the company has more flexibility.

In the end, however, you still must get the company to agree to those elements of the deal that are critical to you. If you are not able to do so, or if have to give up too much to get what you need, perhaps this is the wrong job for you. However, before you insist on any particular term in your employment package, be sure that it is really essential. By insisting on a particular term you may be giving up something of greater value; you may even be giving up your chance to get the job altogether.

Commandment 9: Focus on Your Goals, Not on Winning

Too often in negotiations winning becomes more important than the actual goals that are achieved. This tendency is particularly problematic in employment negotiations. Not only is it important to focus on achieving your goals; it is also important not to make your future boss feel like a loser in the negotiations. Remember, that this person will control you future career. You will have gained little by negotiating a good deal if you alienate your future boss in the process.

Commandment 10: Know When to Quit Bargaining

There comes a point in every negotiation when you have achieved everything that you could gave reasonably expected to achieve. At that point you should thank the person you are dealing with and accept the offer. If you don't recognize when to stop negotiating, you run the risk of having the company decide that it made a mistake by offering you the job in the first place. Most companies will want to treat you fairly and make you happy, but few companies want to hire a prima donna. Being perceived as greedy or unreasonable may cause the deal to fall apart. Even if it does not, you will have done immeasurable harm to your career with your new employer.

Commandment 11: Never Forget That Employment Is an Ongoing Relationship

This is the most important commandment and cannot be overemphasized.

Employment negotiations are the starting point for your career with the company. They set the tone for your employment relationship. Get too little and you are disadvantaged throughout your career; push too hard and you can sour the relationship before it even begins. How you handle the initial negotiations can have an impact, for better or worse, on how successful your tenure with a company will be.

Following the Ten Commandments of Employment Negotiations and employing the negotiating strategies described in my book will enable you to effectively negotiate the terms of your new employment. Once you have done so, you will be able to start your new job confident that you have achieved the best possible result. If you do your job well, there will be opportunities to negotiate further improvements as time goes on.

     By Lee Miller; copyright 1998 by The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc