Businessweek has published its list of 30 all time great entrepreneurs. Despite the obvious bias of 90% of the people being from America, it does force one to think of the most impactful innovations and businesses over last 300 years.
Its interesting that the first entry is an admiral, circa 1400 AD. Its also interesting to see the recency affect of journalistic memory — a large chunk of people coming from achieving prominence in last 10-20 years, even though the list attempts to cover a span of 600 years in all.
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Skeptic,
A short study of history shows us how Ambani was a small piece of the big pie of corruption, where the bigger fish were the Wadias, Birlas and tons of other business houses.
Where Ambani was victimised for overproducing, Bajaj has been praised for overproducing scooters, where he said he was willing to court arrest if that helped more people have scooters. Ambani fought off the short selling brokers in 1983 who wanted to wreck reliance shares; and this prompted the government to initiate a major probe against ambani, but not against the short sellers. And Ambani was a hero because he protected the small investor, despite obvious government protection for the big guys.
Bribes and contracts weren’t started by Ambani – it was the normal way to play the game at that time, it’s just that Ambani won it handsomely when he did, as an outsider, as a village bania who was hated by the hoity toity upper echelons of that time. When the license raj was removed, who took advantage of the new “fair” system? Not the Tatas or Birlas – it was Ambani, and now Reliance is by far the biggest brand in India.
Even recently, nobody’s blaming the organisation that sold Ambani the house. Who were paid a very fair amount for the plot. And they’re blaming Mukesh Ambani of corruption where even the government is not sure the sale is illegal (they have asked for the solicitor general’s advice); I can guarantee you that this sale would not be a problem if, for instance, a politician’s crony had bought the land instead, or a company that was favoured by this government.
Ambani wasn’t the cleanest man around, but he’s far lesser in the evil sense than most of the other “big boys”. His problem was that he made powerful enemies, but he made enormous small and not so powerful friends. So many that the streets of Bombay were full of common people who mourned his death, on the streets, as his hearse moved ahead. Bombay, that does not stop for anything, floods, earthquakes or otherwise, stopped for him. It would be unkind to say he was not a great entrepreneur.
And as for corruption, Edison and Rockefeller have been far worse, going to legal extremes and sometimes beyond to do what they wanted.
The list has Premji and does not have Murthy?
That list is gotta be a mediocre piece of journalism coming from mediocre fresh-out-of-college American journalists.
(I am NOT kidding. When clicked on the author, John Tozzi, this is what you get “John Tozzi is an intern for BusinessWeek.com”)
Why even bother to click on the link?
Any list about all time great entrepreneurs/businessmen is incomplete if doesn’t has the name of Dhirubhai Ambani. As it’s not there , it shows the knowledge and awareness of the people who voted for this about india and her business history.Though I would love to know the parameters, judging on which this list has been compiled.
The other thing I cant understand how can be Premji more influential and greater entrepreneur than Narayan Murthy, Sunil Mittal, Anil Agarwal or even LN Mittal.All of them built their businesses from scratch and took them to global levels with no formal business background(barring LN Mittal) and no big degree.
Well said, bb. My point exactly.
Yes, I agree with Alok Ji. Premji was able to hire the best team to match his vision because he had the resources. But in India other notable entrepreneurs as Narayan Murthy and Shiv Nadar, they create the market and changed the way of Iindian entrepreneurs phenomenon.