In the popular imagination, the business media, and the schools
of business and management that train new generations of
entrepreneurs and executives, achieving extraordinary success in
business is attributed to far-sighted individuals who have taken
bold risks, provided innovative leadership, and introduced new
products, services, or ideas superior to those of the competition.
Amid the growing skepticism about the means by which vast amounts
of wealth are accumulated and its consequences, however, this
belief is long overdue for reevaluation.
In From Predators to Icons, Michel Villette, a sociologist, and
Catherine Vuillermot, a business historian, examine the careers of
thirty-two of today's wealthiest global executives including Warren
Buffett, Ingvar Kamprad, Bernard Arnault, Jim Clark, and Richard
Branson in order to challenge the conventional explanations for
their extreme success and come to a better understanding of modern
business practices.
In contrast to the familiar image of the entrepreneur as a
visionary with a plan, Villette and Vuillermot instead discover a
far less dramatic process of improvised adaptations gradually
assembled into a coherent course of conduct. And rather than being
risk-takers, those who are most successful in business are
risk-minimizers. Huge gains, these case studies reveal, are most
reliably obtained in circumstances where the entrepreneur has
established careful provisions for risk reduction. As for the view
that innovation makes success possible, the authors find that
because innovation is an expensive process that takes a long time
to produce profits, innovators first of all require capital;
success makes innovation possible. The necessary resources, they
show, are most often derived from what they provocatively term
"predation": ruthlessly taking advantage of imperfections,
weaknesses, and vulnerabilities within the market or among
competitors. Finally, From Predator to Icon considers the
"practical ethics" implemented during the phase in which capital is
most rapidly accumulated, as well as the social consequences of
these activities.
Drawing on interviews with some of their subjects and,
crucially, close readings of the authorized biographies and other
hagiographic accounts of these figures, which eliminates the bias
of malicious interpretations, Villette and Vuillermot provide
revelatory insights about the creation and maintenance of business
wealth that will be profitably read by both the captains and the
critics of contemporary capitalism."
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