Word: fords
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From Henry Ford at one end of the century to Bill Gates at the other, these 20 people influenced lives far beyond the business world. Indeed, TIME defines the business realm broadly, including anyone who works for a living, and our list extends to the world of sports and the National Football League's Pete Rozelle, organized labor and the United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, and even organized crime's Lucky Luciano, whose syndicate was certainly better managed than was Al Capone...
...mergers-and-acquisitions department, providing the money and acumen needed to launch the prototypes of modern industrial corporations. Under Morgan's leadership, this century began much as the 19th century ended, with heavy industry--steel, rails, electricity, and oil--ascendant. Automobiles were in short supply until 1913, when Henry Ford introduced the assembly line and mass production, making ours a consumer as well as an industrial society. As the century progressed, the service economy began to compete with industry as fortunes were made in soft drinks (Coca-Cola), processed foods (Heinz), insurance (Travelers, AIG) and retail (Sears, Wal-Mart...
...William Durant (all from General Motors), Walter Chrysler, Ferdinand Porsche (Porsche and Volkswagen), Ransom Olds, Clement Studebaker and the Dodge brothers. Henry J. Kaiser not only built cars but also played a key role in shipbuilding, construction, housing and hospitals. In the end, however, we settled on Henry Ford because his individual genius was so responsible for automating the assembly line and building the industry...
...managers kept several famous names off the list--not only Sloan, whose organizational and management skills helped consolidate several disparate automakers into General Motors, but also a number of chief executives best known for their ability to manage large enterprises and increase shareholder value. It should be remembered that Ford Motor Co. was foundering when Henry Ford died, and it was left to his grandson Henry Ford II to revive the company after World War II with the help of a group of button-down managers, the "Whiz Kids," including Robert McNamara, Arjay Miller and Charles Thornton. Similarly, Walt Disney...
...often simplistic and uninformed, and they rarely understand that government's stakeholders have different interests from their own company's shareholders'. Moreover, they tend to be authoritarian, and they aren't often very tolerant of contrary opinions. Lee Iacocca, the charismatic auto executive who did great work at Ford and Chrysler, was one CEO who recognized his limitations. Following publication of his autobiography, Iacocca, which sold 7 million copies, he flirted briefly with making a run for the presidency. In the end, Iacocca decided against it, realizing he would never have the patience required to deal with Congress. Compromising...