American Entrepreneur, Chapter 6: Entrepreneurs in the Age of Upheaval, 1850-1880

Each of the 14 chapters spans approximately 20 years of US business history with an emphasis on noteworthy entrepreneurial endeavors and individuals. The authors outline the basic facts but characterize entrepreneurs as "resilient creatures" undaunted by government interventions such as tariffs, antitrust legislation, and unions that seek to control personal initiative. They include few comments regarding the consequences of these unrestrained initiatives on workforce conditions.

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As with Schweikert's other works, his chatty style and moralistic tone offers an alternative perspective from the dominant viewpoint. A Comparative and Historical Study provides a balanced, scholarly overview of entrepreneurship in general and within the US specifically, which is more appropriate for students, as is Mansel Blackford's broader, authoritative A History of Small Business in America 2nd ed.

Miller emeritus, Simmons College. Thank you for using the catalog. Entrepreneurship -- United States -- History. Summary Ever since the first colonists landed in "The New World," Americans have forged ahead in their quest to make good on the promises of capitalism and independence. Weaving together vivid narrative with economic analysis, American Entrepreneur recounts fascinating successes and failures, including: Kellogg, Henry Ford, and J. It is an adventure to start a business, and the greatest risk takers in that adventure are entrepreneurs. This is the epic story of America's entrepreneurs and the economy they created.

Choice Review An update of Schweikart's earlier work, The Entrepreneurial Adventure, an undergraduate textbook published in , this revised edition is intended for casual readers. The Essence of Enterprise Sometime in , shoppers began to see an odd sight: Kids in malls would appear to walk a few steps and then strangely seem to glide on their heels.

A closer look revealed they were wearing "Heelys," athletic shoes with wheels in the heels. Heelys are the brainchild of Roger Adams, who invented the shoes while taking time off with "a midlife crisis. Suddenly Adams had the idea for a combination shoe and skate--a shoe that could roll on command when the wearer shifted body weight. He cut up some Nike running shoes, put some skateboard wheels in the back, and a prototype was born. Adams started his company in December , went public in , and sold out his stock in hours.

In June , Heelys, Inc. On his way to Texas to meet with an investor, his car was rear-ended and caught fire. His prototype, his business plan, and even his clothes were in that car. A short time later, however, the son of a patent attorney showed Adams's promo- tional film to a friend, whose father was a venture capitalist.

Impressed, the father backed Heelys. Business historians will look back at the introduction of Heelys and ask why they were developed. While the answer may seem obvious to some people okay, some young people , historians often make the obvious complex.

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For example, Adams claimed that he harkened back to the fun of his childhood, but did he contrive the recollections of his youth as a justification after the fact? Did vast, sweeping social forces make "the right time" for such an invention? Did Adams perceive great profits and leave other, unrelated work to create his product?



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In short, does the economy operate from entrepreneurs upward or from large invisible forces downward? And what is the role of success in creating, and sustaining, business? To understand how success and failure, birth and death are essential to the entrepreneurial process, it is necessary to ask yet another set of questions.

What is it that entrepreneurs do? How do they differ from managers who oversee an existing business?

The 15 Characteristics of Effective Entrepreneurs

How do other people, even others around the world who have no awareness of entrepreneurs' efforts or specific businesses, benefit from entrepreneurs' successes? Perhaps more important, how do those same people benefit from entrepreneurs' failures? This book, while tracing the history of American business from its European origins to contemporary times, will examine these questions through a focus on entrepreneurs. To a considerable extent, this book is a celebration of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.



We do not intend to delve deeply into the contributions of labor or on the social forces that shaped labor movements. Instead, the entrepreneur, and those forces that directly affect entrepreneurs, will receive central treatment. At the same time, defining entrepreneurship has proved more difficult for economists and business historians than might appear at first glance, and that definition has expanded or changed over time.

We have therefore chosen to examine the context in which the concept of entrepreneurship appeared in a comprehensive framework. It begins not with a businessman, but with a professor at the University of Glasgow, Adam Smith. He only laid out in a systematic form an explanation of economic practices as old as time itself.

But Smith is worth examining in detail at this early point for two reasons. First, his theory is as valid today as it was in Challengers still remain, but increasingly they have retreated into debating the effects of capitalism on spiritual grounds, where proof is impossible and faith is essential. Second, Smith's explanation of human behavior is particularly important to the point of this book: Adam Smith explained economic wealth creation as a process of making products or providing services with the goal of personal gain. For most people, gain means material gain.

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