Unit 9.2. Successful Entrepreneurs

 

Steven Jobs William Gates

Although they lived hundreds of miles apart, Steven Jobs and William Gates have much in common. Both were born in 1956. Both were pioneers in the personal computer industry. And both became multimillionaires when they were still in their 20s.

The earliest computers were highly technical machines, under­standable only to scientists. Steven Jobs reasoned that if computers were made easier to use and less expensive, the public would buy them. He was right. With $1,300 (most of which came from the sale of his second-hand Volkswagen van), Jobs produced what he called the Apple 1 computer. The success of the Apple I gave him the money to finance the design of new and improved personal computers. In 1980 Apple sold its stock to the public for the first time, with a market value of $1.79 billion! Steve Jobs died in 2011.

Bill Gates was intrigued by the success of the new personal computers coming onto the market in the 1970s. Gates realized that the success of personal computers would depend on the availability of "user- friendly" (easy-to-use) software. In 1975 he co-founded Microsoft Corporation which designed the basic operating software for all IBM and' IBM-compatible personal computers. Today Microsoft Corporation is the largest software company, and Bill Gates, by owning 40 percent of its stock, has became the world's youngest billionaire.

HENRY FORD (1863-1947)

 

Modern production methods took a giant leap forward in 1913 when Henry Ford introduced the use of the assembly line in the production of automobiles. In those days, automobiles were built in much the same way as a house. That is, workers simply picked a spot on the factory floor, and assembled the car from the bottom up.

As business grew, Ford began manufacturing many of the component parts formerly purchased from suppliers. Typically, the components were put together by one worker who performed all the operations necessary to assemble them. The method was quite costly, and so only the wealthy could afford to buy automobiles in those days.

This did not please Henry Ford who wanted to bring the price of automobiles down to the point where most families could afford them. The key to achieving this goal, in Ford's view, was through the improvement of labour productivity. He needed to find a way to 1) limit the number of operations performed by each worker, 2) bring the work to the worker rather than the other way around, and 3) perform each operation in the most efficient sequence he could find. He found what he was seeking in his new creation: the assembly line.

Ford's first line, introduced in April 1913, was used to assemble generators. Working in the old way, one worker had been able to put together 25 to 30 generators in a 9-hour day. This translated to something around 20 minutes per assembly. The new line broke the operation into 29 steps performed by individual workers on parts that were brought to them by the steadily moving assembly line. The new process reduced assembly time to an average of 13 minutes per generator. One year later, additional experimentation divided production into 84 operations and reduced assembly time to 5 minutes per generator. Assembly line methods brought the price of automobiles within the reach of millions of American families. As a result, automobile registrations jumped from 944,000 in 1912 to 2.5 million in 1915 and 20 million by 1925.

Henry Ford was not an economist, but his innovative production strategies had a revolutionary impact on American industry and living standards. As automobiles, appliances, and other labour saving goods of the new industrial age became less expensive and more affordable for the average family, it was clear that the assembly lines of a Michigan factory had changed American households as dramatically as its factories.

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