View source for Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero


Book: "FROM PREDATORS TO ICONS: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero" Michel Villette; Catherine Vuillermot. Cornell Univ. Press.

URL = http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=5465


=Description=

"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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