1. Karen Howells
ENGG 437: Entrepreneurship And Leadership
Assigment 1 : Entrepreneur Research Project
Uğur UYANIK
283257
Computer Engineering
2.
3. Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist,
the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the
development of the assembly line technique of mass production.
Although Ford did not invent the automobile, he developed and
manufactured the first automobile that many middle class Americans
could afford to buy. His introduction of the Model T automobile
revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the
Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known
people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of
inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a
global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense
commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical
and business innovations, including a franchise system that put
dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six
continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but
arranged for his family to control the company permanently.
Ford was also widely known for his pacifism during the first years of
World War I, but also for being the publisher of antisemitic texts such as
the book The International Jew.
4. Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Greenfield Township (near Detroit,
Michigan).His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, of a
family originally from western England, who were among migrants to Ireland as the
English created plantations.[citation needed] His mother, Mary Litogot Ford (1839–
1876), was born in Michigan; she was the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her
parents died when Mary was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns.
Henry Ford's siblings include Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945);
William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934).
His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. At 15, Ford dismantled and
reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the
reputation of a watch repairman.At twenty, Ford walked four miles to their Episcopal
church every Sunday.
Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to
eventually take over the family farm, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, "I never
had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved.
In 1879, he left home to work as an apprentice machinist in the city of Detroit, first with
James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to
Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the
Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse company to
service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at
Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit.
5. Ford married Clara Ala Bryant (1866–1950) in 1888 and supported himself
by farming and running a sawmill.[7] They had one child: Edsel Ford
(1893–1943).
6. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. After his
promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention
to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896
with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle which he named the Ford Quadricycle.
He test-drove it on June 4. After various test-drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve
the Quadricycle.
Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he was introduced to
Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Ford's automobile experimentation. Encouraged by
Edison, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898.Backed by the
capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from the Edison
Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899.However,
the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford wanted.
Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.
With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-
horsepower automobile in October 1901. With this success, Murphy and other
stockholders in the Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on
November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer. In 1902, Murphy brought in Henry M.
Leland as a consultant; Ford, in response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford
gone, Murphy renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.
Teaming up with former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+
horsepower racer "999" which Barney Oldfield was to drive to victory in a race in
October 1902. Ford received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y.
Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer.They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson,
Ltd." to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive
automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by
John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts. Sales were slow, and a crisis
arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment.
7. In response, Malcomson brought in another group of
investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept
a portion of the new company. Ford & Malcomson
was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on
June 16, 1903, with $28,000 capital. The original
investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge
brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray,
Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of
Malcomson's lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace
Rackham. Ford then demonstrated a newly-designed
car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km)
in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at
91.3 miles per hour (147.0 km/h). Convinced by this
success, the race driver Barney Oldfield, who named
Henry Ford with Thomas this new Ford model "999" in honor of the fastest
Edison and Harvey locomotive of the day, took the car around the
Firestone. Ft. Myers,
Florida, February 11, 1929.
country, making the Ford brand known throughout
the United States. Ford also was one of the early
backers of the Indianapolis 500
8. By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Henry to
make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of
technical expertise in design of the engine, chassis, and other
mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son.
Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in
the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.[18]
The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in
December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of
more than 4 million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted an
annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered by
its competitor General Motors (and still in use by automakers
today). Not until the 1930s did Ford overcome his objection to
finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit
Corporation became a major car-financing operation.[19]
Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world's
largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under
his administration.
9. Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of
his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many
departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant
hiring and keeping the best workers.
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120
today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. A
Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot
like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial
depression.‖The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant
turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford,
bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and
lowering training costs.Ford announced his $5-per-day program on
January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for
qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the
details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it
as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,while in 1926 they described it
as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.(Apparently the program
started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later it was changed to
a day off.)
Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to
raise wages or lose their best workers. Ford's policy proved, however,
that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars
they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the
policy as profit-sharing rather than wages.It may have been Couzens who
convinced Ford to adopt the $5 day.
10. The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the
company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives
in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They
frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and what might today be called
"deadbeat dads". The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus
support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of
workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing.
Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly
controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By
the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department
and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and
admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that
consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men
need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this
ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of
investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and
strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without
changing the principle we have changed the method of payment
11. Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter
18 of My Life and Work.[31] He thought they were too heavily influenced by some
leaders who, despite their ostensible good motives, would end up doing more harm than
good for workers. Most wanted to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment,
but Ford saw this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary for
any economic prosperity to exist.
He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would nevertheless
stimulate the larger economy and thus grow new jobs elsewhere, whether within the
same corporation or in others. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse
incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crisis as a way to maintain their own
power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to do right by
their workers, because doing so would maximize their own profits. (Ford did
acknowledge, however, that many managers were basically too bad at managing to
understand this fact.) But Ford believed that eventually, if good managers such as he
could fend off the attacks of misguided people from both left and right (i.e., both
socialists and bad-manager reactionaries), the good managers would create a socio-
economic system wherein neither bad management nor bad unions could find enough
support to continue existing.
To forestall union activity, Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to head
the Service Department. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to squash union
organizing.[32] The most famous incident, on May 26, 1937, involved Bennett's security
men beating with clubs UAW representatives, including Walter Reuther.[33] While the
Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on the
scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett‘s Service Department, and [Brooks] "did
not give orders to intervene."[34] The incident became known as The Battle of the
Overpass.
12. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel (who was president of the company) thought
Ford had to come to some sort of collective bargaining agreement with the unions
because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever.
But Henry (who still had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis even if not an
official one) refused to cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge of talking
to the unions that were trying to organize the Ford Motor Company. Sorensen's
memoirmakes clear that Henry's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure
no agreements were eveThe Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to
recognize the United Auto Workers union (UAW). A sit-down strike by the UAW union
in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted that a distraught Henry
Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather
than cooperate but that his wife Clara told him she would leave him if he destroyed the
family business. She wanted to see their son and grandsons lead it into the future.Henry
complied with his wife's ultimatum. Overnight, the Ford Motor Co. went from the most
stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW contract
terms.[citation needed] The contract was signed in June 1941.
r reached.
13. Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River
Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration
to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle
from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his
company. He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international
peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to
demonstrate
He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the
biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni
Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in
Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the
Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was
essential to world peace.In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and
France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented
with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one
of his few failures. In 1929, Ford accepted Joseph Stalin's invitation to build a model
plant (NNAZ, today GAZ) at Gorky, a city now known under its historical name Nizhny
Novgorod. He sent American engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help set it
up, including future labor leader Walter Reuthert
14. The Ford Motor Company had the policy of doing business
in any nation where the United States had diplomatic
relations. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold cars and
trucks and sometimes assembled them:
Ford of Australia
Ford of Britain
Ford of Argentina
Ford of Brazil
Ford of Canada
Ford of Europe
Ford India
Ford South Africa
Ford Mexico
Ford Philippines
15. By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one third of all the world‘s
automobiles. Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans,
arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination
among all". Germans who discussed "Fordism" often believed that it
represented something quintessentially American. They saw the size,
tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at
the Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that
represented the culture of United States. Both supporters and critics
insisted that Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and
that the auto industry was the key to understanding economic and social
relations in the United States. As one German explained, "Automobiles
have so completely changed the American's mode of life that today one
can hardly imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what
life was like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation―.
For many Germans, Ford embodied the essence of successful
Americanism.
In My Life and Work, Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-
sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological
development throughout the world would progress to the point that
international trade would no longer be based on (what today would be
called) colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all
peoples. His ideas in this passage were vague, but they were idealistic
16. Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his involvement in
the sport as both a builder and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. He
entered stripped-down Model Ts in races, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an
"ocean-to-ocean" (across the United States) race in 1909, and setting a one-mile (1.6 km)
oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, Ford
attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required
the addition of another 1,000 pounds (450 kg) to the car before it could qualify. Ford
dropped out of the race and soon thereafter dropped out of racing permanently, citing
dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of
the Model Ts, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.
In My Life and Work Ford speaks (briefly) of racing in a rather dismissive tone, as
something that is not at all a good measure of automobiles in general. He describes himself
as someone who raced only because in the 1890s through 1910s, one had to race because
prevailing ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an automobile.
Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as this was the definition of success
(flawed though the definition was), then his cars would be the best that there were at
racing.Throughout the book, he continually returns to ideals such as transportation,
production efficiency, affordability, reliability, fuel efficiency, economic prosperity, and the
automation of drudgery in farming and industry, but rarely mentions, and rather belittles,
the idea of merely going fast from point A to point B.
Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he
was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.
17. When Edsel, president of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly
and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the presidency. By this point in his life, he had
had several cardiovascular events (variously cited as heart attack or stroke) and was
mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such a job.
Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years,
though he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had de facto
control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied
him, and this moment was not different. The directors elected him,and he served until
the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing more than
$10 million a month ($134,310,000 a month today). The administration of President
Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in
order to ensure continued war production,but the idea never progressed.
In ill health, Ford ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in September 1945
and went into retirement. He died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 83 in Fair
Lane, his Dearborn estate. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to
5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroit's
Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.
18. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), society is organized on 'Fordist' lines and
the years are dated A.F. or Anno Ford ('In the Year of our Ford') - a reference to A.D.,
Anno Domini ("in the year of our Lord"); and the expression 'My Ford' is used instead of
'My Lord.‗
Upton Sinclair created a fictional description of Ford in the 1937 novel The Flivver King.
Symphonic composer Ferde Grofe composed a tone poem in Henry Ford's honor (1938).
Ford is treated as a character in several historical novels, notably E. L. Doctorow's
Ragtime (1975), and Richard Powers' novel Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (1985).
Ford, his family, and his company were the subjects of a 1986 biography by Robert Lacey
entitled Ford: The Men and the Machine. The book was adapted in 1987 into a film
starring Cliff Robertson and Michael Ironside.
In the 2005 alternative history novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth features Ford
as Secretary of Interior in a fictional Charles Lindbergh presidential administration.
The British author Douglas Galbraith uses the event of the Ford Peace Ship as the center
of his novel King Henry (2007).
Ford appears as a Great Builder in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution.
19. In December 1999, Ford was among 18 included in
Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th
Century, from a poll conducted of the American
people.
In 1928, Ford was awarded the Franklin Institute's
Elliott Cresson Medal.
In 1938, Ford was awarded Nazi Germany's Grand
Cross of the German Eagle, a medal given to
foreigners sympathetic to Nazism.[102]
The United States Postal Service honored Ford
with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢
postage stamp.
