Forbes Greatest Business Stories Of All Time

What do Bill Gates, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Mary Kay Ash, and Walt Disney all have in common? Uncompromising vision, a willingness to take risks, and exceptional business acumen. Not only did these individuals amass great fortunes, they revolutionized the business world and helped shape society as we know it. Theirs are just a few of the stories collected in this anthology of commercial ingenuity. Drawing on a wealth of sources, this priceless collection brings to life extraordinary achievements, many of them forgotten or little known: how Robert Morris, the preeminent merchant of the eighteenth century, financed the American Revolution with his personal credit; how Ray Kroc used a shrewd real estate strategy to turn a faltering hamburger franchise operation into the McDonald's fast food empire; and how Mary Kay Ash built a billion-dollar direct sales cosmetics company by preaching a message of economic empowerment to women. Enlightening and fascinating, Forbes(r) Greatest Business Stories of All Time celebrates larger-than-life ambition, inspired leadership, wheeling and dealing, and hard work. Forbes is a registered trademark of Forbes Inc. Its use is pursuant to a license agreement with Forbes Inc.

Jetzt neu als Broschurausgabe präsentiert dieses Buch die 20 beispielhaften Geschichten unternehmerischen Erfolges, die jeder gebildete Geschäftsmann einfach lesen muß. Unbändiger Ehrgeiz, geniale Führungsgröße, Geschäftemacherei und harte Arbeit - das sind die Zutaten für geschäftlichen Erfolg. Harvard-Journalist Dan Gross beschreibt mit jeder einzelnen Geschichte nicht nur die jeweilige Unternehmerpersönlichkeit, sondern auch die dahinterstehende Gesellschaft, und zwar spannend und dramatisch, gespickt mit Weisheiten und geheimen Erfolgsrezepten. (10/97)

Chronicles the six decades of technological advancement leading up to the high-tech business revolution of today.

"Forbes Greatest Investment Stories of All Time" - Dieses Buch ist ein weiteres Produkt der erfolgreichen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Wiley und dem renommierten Wirtschaftsmagazin Forbes. Es berichtet über die wirklich großen Helden in der Geschichte des Investmentgeschäftes und wie sie dazu beigetragen haben, die Investmentbranche so zu prägen, wie sie heute ist. Autor Richard Phalon ist ein absoluter Experte auf diesem Gebiet. Hier gibt er einen Einblick in die hohe Kunst der Geldanlage und die gewinnbringenden Strategien, mit denen die ganz Großen nicht nur ein Vermögen gemacht, sondern auch die Märkte revolutioniert haben. Seit fast einem halben Jahrhundert beobachtet er die Branche, und viele Katastrophen hat er aus erster Hand miterlebt. Deshalb ist er auch in der Lage, diese Geschichten mit Leben zu füllen. Wenn sich im Investmentgeschäft auch die Daten, Branchen und Namen der Hauptdarsteller ändern - so bleiben die Themen doch immer die gleichen.

Today's top business leaders reveal how to make even the biggest mistakes work for you Forbes Best Business Mistakes reveals practical lessons from some of today's most successful business leaders to show you how to turn a bad business situation into a success. Based on exclusive sit-down interviews with some of today's most successful men and women, author Bob Sellers shares their stories to provide valuable insights and lessons that can help you can learn from their mistakes. Those profiled in Forbes Best Business Mistakes include the likes of Wall Street guru Peter Lynch, larger-than-life media personalities Jim Cramer and Suze Orman, legendary CEO Jack Welch, and newcomer Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, who is poised to change the movie and TV industry landscape as we know it forever. Other names include PIMCO's Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian and Home Depot Founder Arthur Blank. Reveal how top business and financial leaders turned their biggest mistakes into success stories Based on exclusive interviews with some of today's most successful professionals, from Jason Kilar of Hulu to Suze Orman Contains practical lessons on how you can turn a bad business situation around As Malcolm Forbes put it, "Failure is success if we learn from it." Forbes Best Business Mistakes shares the missteps of others so you can learn from them, be inspired by them, and succeed where you may not have seen opportunity before.

This straightforward collection of profiles of fascinating and inspiring comebacks in the Forbes Greatest Business Stories model include personal accounts from Michael Dell, Mattel founder Ruth Handler, Charles Schwab, and others. Makes a great gift book.

How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill — and focused on greatness instead. It’s an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer. They include Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer; CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars and other nutrition foods; Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco; Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman’s Deli of Ann Arbor. Burlingham shows how the leaders of these small giants recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of company they could create. And he shows how we can all benefit by questioning the usual definitions of business success. In his new afterward, Burlingham reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the book.

Based on an extraordinary collaboration between Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO, and editor in chief of Forbes Media, and classics professor John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory provides intriguing comparisons between six great leaders of the ancient world and contemporary business leaders. • Great leaders not only have vision but know how to build structures to effect it. Cyrus the Great did so in creating an empire based on tolerance and inclusion, an approach highly unusual for his or any age. Jack Welch and John Chambers built their business empires using a similar approach, and like Cyrus, they remain the exceptions rather than the rule. • Great leaders know how to build consensus and motivate by doing what is right rather than what is in their self-interest. Xenophon put personal gain aside to lead his fellow Greeks out of a perilous situation in Persia–something very similar to what Lou Gerstner and Anne Mulcahy did in rescuing IBM and Xerox. • Character matters in leadership. Alexander the Great had exceptional leadership skills that enabled him to conquer the eastern half of the ancient world, but he was ultimately destroyed by his inability to manage his phenomenal success. The corporate world is full of similar examples, such as the now incarcerated Dennis Kozlowski, who, flush with success at the head of his empire, was driven down the highway of self-destruction by an out-of-control ego. • A great leader is one who challenges the conventional wisdom of the day and is able to think out of the box to pull off amazing feats. Hannibal did something no one in the ancient world thought possible; he crossed the Alps in winter to challenge Rome for control of the ancient world. That same innovative way of thinking enabled Serge Brin and Larry Page of Google to challenge and best two formidable competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo! • A leader must have ambition to succeed, and Julius Caesar had plenty of it. He set Rome on the path to empire, but his success made him believe he was a living god and blinded him to the dangers that eventually did him in. The parallels with corporate leaders and Wall Street master-of-the-universe types are numerous, but none more salient than Hank Greenberg, who built the AIG insurance empire only to be struck down at the height of his success by the corporate daggers of his directors. • And finally, leadership is about keeping a sane and modest perspective in the face of success and remaining focused on the fundamentals–the nuts and bolts of making an organization work day in and day out. Augustus saved Rome from dissolution after the assassination of Julius Caesar and ruled it for more than forty years, bringing the empire to the height of its power. What made him successful were personal humility, attention to the mundane details of building and maintaining an infrastructure, and the understanding of limits. Augustus set Rome on a course of prosperity and stability that lasted for centuries, just as Alfred Sloan, using many of the same approaches, built GM into the leviathan that until recently dominated the automotive business.

From the trailblazing founder and CEO of the Virgin Group, a powerful argument for using business to make a positive impact in the world. Richard Branson, one of the world’s most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it’s time to turn capitalism upside down—to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities and the planet. As he writes, “My message is a simple one: business as usual isn’t working. In fact, it’s ‘business as usual’ that’s wrecking our planet. Resources are being used up; the air, the sea, the land—are all heavily polluted. The poor are getting poorer. Many are dying of starvation or because they can’t afford a dollar a day for life-saving medicine. . . . Prophesying doom and gloom is simply not my style. . . . I think business can help fix things and create a more prosperous world for everyone. I happen to believe in business because I believe that business can be a force for good. By that I mean doing good is good for business.” Screw Business as Usual shows how easy it is for both businesses and individuals to embark on a whole new way of doing things, solving major problems and turning our work into something we both love and are proud of.